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Rating:
General Audiences

Archive Warning:
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:
Gen
Fandoms:
Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel
Trilogy, Star Wars Original Trilogy

Relationships:
Padmé Amidala & Luke Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine &
Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala & Sheev Palpatine

Characters:
Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, Sheev Palpatine |
Darth Sidious, Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader,
Yoda (Star Wars)
Additional Tags:
Alternate Universe

Language:
English
Collections:
Star Wars Creative’s Story Popcorn Collection
Stats:
Published: 2021-07-30 Words: 5,271 Chapters:
1/1 Comments: 14 Kudos: 286 Bookmarks:
54 Hits: 2,384

Forgotten
Reflections
angel_gidget, kannerin,
Libby_25cSoda, MissChrisDaae,
MyFairKatie, Salicinalis,
SilverDaye, SpellCleaver,
warriorfaeriequeen
Summary:
Upon clearing out the treasury of
the Imperial Palace after the Battle
of Endor, Luke comes across a
mirror with a mysterious woman
trapped inside it.

Notes:
This story was written as a game
called Story Popcorn where one
person writes a small bit then
someone else writes another bit and
so on. This game was played on the
Star Wars Creatives Discord:
https://discord.gg/Z3fgVMx

Luke whistled appreciatively as he walked through the

room. If there was one thing he wouldn't have
expected from the treasury of the Imperial Palace, it
was that the late Emperor had been a hoarder. A
disorganized one, at that. And yet the evidence was
laid out before him, countless treasures that had
been pillaged and pilfered from across the galaxy,
scattered and strewn about without any sort of
means of organization beyond a list of the items
contained within.

Leia had been overseeing the return of the items, but

Han had begged Luke to take over for the night so he
could take Leia out on a date and 'make her have
some fun for once.' And despite his sister's
objections, Luke had agreed.

As he worked his way through the list on Leia's

datapad, he stopped at a portrait of a beautiful
brunette woman with sad brown eyes. Or at least it
had looked like a portrait at first glance. As he got
closer, he could see his own reflection looking back
and moving in time with him.

No longer trusting his eyes, Luke reached out with

the Force.

Reaching out with the Force was a mistake. A dark

wave of revulsion swept over him as he was struck by
an echo of suppressed memory.

He had been fourteen when he'd wandered too close

to the Sarlacc Pit. He'd heard of the horrors of
Carkoon so he'd been struck by how quiet the rim of
it was. But as he lingered, he began to hear the gasps
on the wind, the whimpers of voices so scraped raw
from screaming, they could hardly put air behind their
cries. Young Luke could have sworn he felt their pain
as he knelt there, frozen. Eventually, Biggs caught up
to him, shook him, and dragged him away.

The mirror felt like the pit. Something—someone—

was trapped inside it. And they'd been trapped there
for a long, long time.

As if to confirm his theory, the woman blinked. Then

her lips parted, forming soundless words. Luke wasn’t
the best at lip-reading, but it looked an awful lot like
“Help me.”

“Can you hear me?” His voice shook as he spoke.

The woman blinked again and tilted her head. Her

hair was done up with a starbird-shaped headpiece,
but a few loose strands of hair brushed over her
purple gown as she did. She frowned, hesitated, and
then nodded as she pressed her hand against the
glass. Her palm was pale as the sand in the Dune
Sea. "Help me," she mouthed again. Then she
mouthed something familiar. Luke flinched. But she
mouthed it again, and this time it was unmistakable:
"Luke."

He pulled away. How did she know his name? What

was this thing?

He started flipping through the files on Leia's

datapad, trying to find an explanation for 'creepy
mirror with a woman who somehow knows my name.'

It had to be in there somewhere, right?

Wrong.

It wasn’t there. There was nothing there. He ran a

hand through his hair and looked at the mirror
again. The woman was still there, watching him. She
looked so sad.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I ... I don’t know

if you can even hear me.” Slowly, she placed her
hand against the glass. He slowly approached and
placed his own over hers.

It felt... it felt like smooth glass. Cold—colder than it

should have been, colder than it had any right to be
in the perfectly temperature-controlled room, but it
felt like glass. Ever so hesitantly, he pushed on the
glass. Luke didn't want to break the mirror; he didn't
know what would happen to the woman, but the
mirror likely wouldn't break that easily. The woman
silently repeated his name again, her dark eyes
pleading in a way that felt familiar.

“I’m trying to help you!” Luke insisted. “I just don’t

know how!”

As the woman pulled back, he noticed something at

the neck of her dress, something oddly familiar in a
different way. “Is that japor?”

She froze and then nodded hesitantly.

“Are you from Tatooine?”

She shook her head.

“Have you been to Tatooine?”

A nod. Then she mouthed something again; he

squinted at her lips to make it out.

Skywalker.

Luke's eyes widened. "Me?" She shook her head.

"...My father?" She nodded.

She pressed a hand to her heart with a wistful smile,

then reached out and pressed her hand to the mirror
as if she were trying to touch his cheek.

It couldn’t be… beautiful… kind… sad… “Mother?”

She nodded. Tears welled up in his eyes as he took a

step closer, his breath fogging the glass. She made a
face somewhere between amusement and sorrow and
shook her head, leaning away. He laughed softly and
backed up.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

Luke couldn't believe he was staring at his mother—

the mysterious person he had never known anything
about.

And she was somehow trapped in a mirror, and he

had no way of knowing how to get her out.

"I want to help you," Luke said softly. She smiled

sadly, and Luke got the feeling that his natural
inclination to help people must have come from her.
"Do you know how I can?"

His mother shook her head, and Luke pursed his lips,
looking down at his lightsaber. He removed it from
the clip on his belt and held it up.

“Do you think this could get you out?”

The look she gave him reminded him of Aunt Beru

hearing him suggest that they try to make a bantha
that could fly.

Luke ran a hand through his hair. He had no clue. No

idea. Who had ever heard of such a th—

Wait.

Ben.

Perhaps he knew. Though Luke hadn't seen or heard

much from the old Jedi since . . .

His father.

He had only seen his father's ghost once, during the

celebration on Endor. But was it possible?

He turned away from the mirror. "Father?" he called

out, hopefully in the Force as well as aloud.

Luke felt a flutter at the back of his mind. He could

hear his father's voice, faint but urgent on the air...

"Cut her out, cut her out, cut her out!!"

But then... then he heard two-voices-as-one that

sounded like Ben and Yoda together,

"Patience!"

He saw Yoda's blue outline against the corner of his

eye, whispering "A Sith enchantment, this is. Know
its secrets, we do not."

Finally, Ben's voice, the most solid and sure of all (the
most practiced at being dead and speaking to the
living) spoke out. "While trapped all this time, she
appears unharmed. Best to listen to the Force, and
perhaps the Emperor's records may hold some
clue..."

Luke couldn't quite make out his father's argument,

but he could tell the ghosts were disagreeing with
each other all around him. Their anxiousness and
hesitation grew with a mounting pressure in the
Force.

So Luke paused and listened. He listened carefully.

Then, in a single sure movement, he ignited his
lightsaber and plunged it into the glass.

Luke wasn't an idiot. He was careful not to hit his own

mother with the blade. On the other side of the glass,
she watched with eyes blown wide as the laser light
reached through to her side. Halfway, then no
further. She blinked, and gasped, and Luke realized
then that he was gasping too.

The pressure he had felt in the Force did not

dissipate. Instead, it grew. A heavy pressure, tighter
and tighter, and then a vortex of wind swirled out
from the stabbing point.

It was wild and painful, reminding Luke of the

miniature hurricane that had happened upon
Palpatine's death. Blinking through tears, he saw the
glass around the lightsaber begin to crack.

His mother looked up. He saw a fearful hope in her

eyes and felt it reflected in himself. She nodded,
urging him to keep pressing.

And he tried. Force, did he try. (Yoda's platitudes be

damned.)

But as the pressure of the winds mounted, Luke could

no longer look at the cut directly, and the pressure
compacted and exploded, blowing him back, knocking
him against the wall.

The world went black for a moment or two. He heard

the ghosts yelling, a woman's sob, and he felt
something wet sliding from his ear to his cheek.

He opened his eyes. Though he had heard the sounds

of shattering glass, only a few pieces of the mirror lay
in jagged shards on the floor. Though there was a
great crack and a small hole in the mirror... the
majority of it was still intact.

And his mother was still inside.

But she let out a cry and he could hear it.

She exhaled and he could practically feel it.

"Mom?"

"Luke?" Her voice. Worried and cultured. Not quite

Core-world, but...

Luke reached up to his cheek and flinched. A shard of

the glass had landed right into his ear. And now it let
him hear her.

"Luke, are you alright?" she asked again, and her

voice was soft and trembling. "You're bleeding..."

"It's nothing I can't heal," he promised reassuringly.

"I just... I can't believe it's you..."

They stared at each other a moment, wondering

smiles on their faces. He could see some of Leia in
the shape of her eyes and the gentle turn of her
nose. But the smile gently reaching across her face,
well, that smile resembled his own.

"It's only for family". Anakin's ghostly voice

whispered in Luke's ear once more. "That smile, I
mean. She has others. For politics. Guarded smiles.
But this one is... heaven. "

Luke noted his father's tone, glancing at the japor

snippet at his mother's neck once more. He hadn't
thought about it since Bespin, but Luke realized with
a start that his parents had probably been in love.

He snapped back to the present as she cleared her

throat. "Well, now that we can communicate, I think
we've got a chance of getting me out of here."

"Er, right!" Luke glanced around. Palpatine's little

hoard room was a mess. But hopefully, something
could help free her. Maybe?

Her face grew troubled and she gave a slow exhale,

"When I was giving birth to you and your sister, I felt
a— a drain. I'm not sure how to explain it. It started
with just my energy. But once you two were born,
whatever was taking just kept taking and I blacked
out.

"I woke up without sensation—without a body—but I

could still see Palpatine finishing whatever he was
doing by referencing a triangular object. It was about
the size of a lightsaber practice remote, and it
alternated between giving off holos and a red light."

"A Sith Holocron!" The ghosts gasped together.

"I don't know what's worse," Luke heard his father's

voice say. "The fact that he trapped my wife in a
mirror for thirty years, or the fact that he didn't tell
me she was alive. After all the apparently-not-empty
promises to keep her alive."

What...?

Had his father just implied that he turned to the dark

side for love? Cause that was—nope, not even going
to think about how that was possible.

Luke hadn't even originally thought his parents had

been in love. His father hadn't known he existed for
nineteen years, and when he'd met him, he didn't
really seem like the loving type.

"Luke, shield." Luke immediately did as his father's

voice said. "And yes, I loved your mother. That's why
I'd like you to focus on getting her out!"

I wasn't going to just leave her in there, Luke pointed

out in a minor flash of irritation. She's my mother.

"That's not what I meant," Anakin scolded gently.

"You're already hurt, and this is probably going to
involve work that will put you in the path of the Dark
Side."

"Too risky, this is," Yoda interjected, "Unnatural.

Warned you, I did, young Skywalker, that accepted,
death must be."

"Don't," Anakin said, his jaw clenching slightly, and

Luke's eyes widened. There was clearly more to the
story than he realized.

Luke ignored them. If they didn’t know the answer,

they couldn’t help him here, and despite his burning
curiosity, his father was right. He needed to focus.

“A Sith Holocron,” he murmured, then turned to his

mother. “Did you see where he put it?”

She shook her head. “Only up,” she waved a hand

towards the top of the frame, “Above me,
somewhere. And that was before I was moved to this
room.”

Luke moved his gaze up anyway—and froze.

The mirror was curling and ornate, with symbols he

didn’t recognize subtly twisted into the brass swirls.
They all surrounded a small, pointed, triangular ruby
sunk deep into the center at the top. The ruby was
only that which emerged from the structure; it was
no larger than his little fingernail.

Surely that was too small to be a Holocron.... and yet

when Luke reached out toward it with the Force, he
felt the violent, angry energy of the Dark Side roiling
out from it. He could have even sworn he heard the
Emperor's sickly cackling from the gem.

"I think I found it, Mother..."

"Be careful," she warned, her brows furrowing and

bending upwards as she watched him. "I don't want
you to get hurt..."

“It’ll be fine,” Luke promised, and before he could

think too hard about what he was doing, took a hold
of it and pulled.

It didn’t budge. It was wedged tight in the frame, no

matter how much he tugged, and after a moment he
gave up with a huff.

“I don’t think it will work, Luke,” his mother said.

Luke didn’t listen. His lightsaber had worked once—to

an extent—hadn’t it? He might as well try again.

He lifted it in his hands and angled the tip towards

the jewel.

“Luke, don’t—“ he didn’t hear which of the Jedi

specters said it before his emerald saber made
contact with the gem.

The two opposing artifacts met in a roar that drowned

out all other sounds and projected out a pulse of
violently swirling energy that knocked Luke backward
in a haze of red smoke.

“Luke?” This time, it was definitely his mother calling

his name and she sounded much closer.

Luke felt a soft hand on his face, checking for injuries

with practiced fingers.

“Mom…” Luke reached up to touch the hand on his

face as the smoke cleared and he got his first clear
look at her. She was… smaller than he’d expected.
Everything about her seemed very delicate.

“Hi, Luke.”

The hand on his face was gentle, the skin soft under
his touch, and he closed his eyes and leaned into it.

“What happened to you?” he murmured. “Where...

where are we?”

His mother brushed her thumb over his cheekbone,

barely a ghost of a touch, and Luke opened his eyes
again, taking in the sight of his mother—his mother—
standing before him, a soft smile on her face.

"Well," She said, voice taking on a tinge of

amusement. "As I said earlier, I was unconscious for
the majority of my... imprisonment."

Luke snorted, and his mother's hand left his face,

folded in front of her along with her other hand.

"And where we are, well," she continued, her

amusement quickly lost in favor of pity. "I've spent
enough time in this mirror to know that we aren't
outside of it."

Luke blinked, before stumbling backwards once her

words register to him. He turned sharply on his heel,
and saw the room filled with the Emperor's collection,
rippling and slightly distorted, as if he were viewing it
underwater.

"I thank you, young Skywalker."

Oh, no. No. Luke knew that voice. The distorted world
of the mirror rotated and shifted until they were
facing the cloaked visage of the Emperor, who gave
them a smile filled with rotting teeth.

"And you as well, my dear Padmé. I see now where

the boy gets his weaknesses. We shall have to see if
your daughter follows more in her father's footsteps."

Luke reached a hand to his belt, intending to grab his

lightsaber, but his fingers closed around nothing.

His lightsaber. It was missing.

He quickly fell to panic as he looked around, eyes

wide and hands curled into fists, before his mother's
voice cut through the oppressive silence like a knife
through butter.

"If you are here to gloat, save it," she said viciously.
"You have not said anything new, nor anything
intelligent, for the past thirty years."

His mom was a badass.

“Oh, but I do enjoy it so much,” the Emperor

sneered. “I take such delight in watching you suffer
as everything you love is taken from you. Almost as
much as I enjoyed tormenting your husband for that
same thirty years.”

"Leave. Anakin. Out. Of. This," Padmé snarled,

advancing on the cloaked Sith. Luke trailed behind
her, content to let her take the reins of this situation.
As he walked, he glanced around, seeing no sign of
the collection room anywhere. The Force was also
strangely absent from wherever they are, its ambient
hum and the faint presences of the ghosts gone.

He shivered, walking a little faster to catch up to his

mother's retreating figure.

"Well, it's not as if I can bring him back," Sidious

scoffed. "He's long since passed into the Force. And
probably wondering why he can't find you."

"Stop it," Padmé repeated.

"I'll be gone soon enough, and then you and your son
can bond to your heart's content. Or watch me
destroy your New Republic," he sneered at Luke, "just
as I did the old one."

"We are not going to let you get the chance," Luke
chimed in defensively.

Sidious laughed, loud and drawn out.

“What will you do about it, little Skywalker?” he

taunted. “You have no power here.”

Luke cursed quietly, looking back over his shoulder.

The mirror frame taunted him, showing nothing but
an empty, blank white room beyond the distorted
glass.

He narrowed his eyes, gaze flicking up and down the

Sith Emperor—or former Emperor, that was.

Luke didn't see a lightsaber.

And maybe he didn't have one either, but neither of

them could reach the Force within the mirror. Padmé
was on Luke's side.

Two versus one.

And between the three of them? Sidious, without the

Force, was just a wrinkly old man.

"Don't underestimate him," his mother warned,

placing a hand on his forearm. He wondered how she
knew what he was thinking. "You look very much like
your father right now."

"But we can take him, right?"

"We certainly have to try."

Luke nodded; that was a philosophy he certainly

understood. The only issue was... how?

He glanced back through the surface of the mirror,

though the distortion made his eyes swim and head
ache. Palpatine was still there, cackling at them both
while his mother gripped his upper arm and glared at
him, but... that wasn’t right.

“Palpatine is dead,” he murmured to her. “We... we’re

in a storage room of the Imperial Palace. Han, Leia,
and I have been clearing it out since Vader killed
him.”

Padmé frowned.

“I saw something dramatic happening through the

glass a few days before you started coming here
regularly,” she said. “But I didn’t know that. What
does this mean? Is Palpatine here just a mirage?”

"No, I think..." Luke swallowed. "I think this mirror

does something to capture people's... souls through
the Force. And that he moved into it when Father
killed him. So... I guess he's more of a ghost."

Does that mean I’m a ghost? Am I dead? Is my body

outside the mirror, and that's why I don't have my
saber?

He didn't know what to think. His mother felt real and

solid beside him—was she dead too? That was a
question he hadn't considered—so what did that say
about their situation? And... Palpatine...

He still swam in the strange reflection through the

glass, but now Luke knew what to look for, he
seemed strangely two-dimensional. Like he was just
light on the surface of a lake, with nothing of
substance beneath.

On instinct, Luke reached out and poked his nose.

Palpatine jerked back, hissing like an offended cat.

"You dare!"

"After everything you've done, it's the least you

deserve," Padmé said as, emboldened by Luke's
efforts, she pulled back her fist and released it in a
violent punch, straight to the old man's jaw.

"I trusted you!" she shouted as Palpatine dropped to

the floor from the shock and force of her blow. "You
were practically family to me! And you used me at
every turn!"

He tried to laugh, but apparently, spirits could bleed,

because blood spurted from his nose and splattered
down his front. He stopped to choke.

Then he said back, as smoothly as one could when

bloody spittle flew with every syllable, "That was your
mistake, my dear. I must thank you for being so easy
to manipulate. If you had remained so, I may have
let you stay with your husband after he pledged his
service to me and not trapped you in here." He rose
to his feet again. "You could have seen your children
grow up had you only cooperated."

"And I have regretted every second I was not with

them," Padmé hissed, shaking her hand to get the
little splatter of blood off. "The only thing I would
even consider thanking you for is that you did not
make me watch as you tormented Anakin."

Luke met his mother's eye as they began to circle

around the old Sith. At once, Luke leaped at his left
while Padmé went to the right. Palpatine knocked his
head back into Luke's face, and he momentarily saw
dots in front of his eyes as the Emperor dug his nails
into his cheek.

It hurt, and Luke felt it as only a very alive person

could.

He snarled, scrabbling for a better grip as the former

Emperor's weight pushed him to the ground.
Palpatine was surprisingly heavy for his age and
gaunt appearance, leaving Luke with no choice but to
revert back to the style of brawling he'd first picked
up on Tatooine's dusty sands.

He spat in Palpatine's eye.

As the man recoiled, Luke surged up with a right

hook- Palpatine grabbed Luke's wrist with a speed
and iron grip that belied his frail, wrinkly appearance.
But they'd both forgotten about Padmé's presence in
the fight.

The former queen's arms lashed out, wrapping

around the Emperor's throat in a chokehold.

"Really experience what it felt like," she hissed. "The

way the air presses out of your lungs, and the way
you fight to retain it. The helplessness when you
realize you can't. I'd tell you to imagine it comes from
the person you love most, but you don't love anyone
but yourself, do you, Sheev?"

Palpatine released his grip on Luke’s wrist to struggle

feebly against Padmé’s chokehold, but all Luke could
do was stare in shock momentarily because what the
kriff, no one had told him that his mother was
absolutely terrifying—

When Palpatine attempted—and failed, but only

because Padmé twisted—to slam his head back into
his mother’s nose, Luke abruptly remembered it
wasn’t much good having a two-to-one advantage if
half the team members stood around gaping and
doing nothing. He took a deep breath, squared his
shoulders, mentally prepared himself to fight without
his lightsaber, and rolled up his sleeves.

He liked this shirt; it would be a shame to get blood

on it.

During all this, his mother hadn’t released Palpatine

from her hold, but the old Sith hadn’t stopped trying
to claw her away. Luke could see tears in her sleeves,
a few drops of blood coming from her skin, and he
tried to think of what to do.

Palpatine shouldn't be a difficult opponent, he looked

so spindly and frail, one good punch ought to take
him down completely.

So Luke wound up with his mechanical hand, swung

back, and aimed a solid right hook directly at the
Emperor's family jewels.

Palpatine shrieked, and his mother cackled,

tightening her grip on the Sith’s neck.

"You won't get near Leia," she warned as she

squeezed. "You don't get to hurt anyone or anything
else that I love. You don't get to keep cheating death
while destroying good people. Do you understand me,
Sheev? Do you?"

“You have no,” Palpatine wheezed out, “power here—

“

“Nor do you,” she hissed back. “And we both know

that the real reason you tried to kill me is that you
were afraid of what I could do.”

Somewhere in the depths of the mirror's realm,

starting off far enough away that Luke only felt a faint
hint of it, a wind picked up, steadily growing louder
and closer as his mother and Palpatine traded pointed
insults, until he eventually couldn’t hear either of
them, though they were only a few feet away. It
whipped his mother's hair around, until she looked
wild and untamed and powerful.

In contrast, Palpatine looked like a bug under a

microscope.

Luke couldn’t find it in himself to feel pity when his

mother dug her fingernails into the side of Palpatine's
neck, even as she hissed out another threat of what
she would do if he thought about trying to turn Leia
to the Dark Side.

"It ends," she paused as her hands sank deeper into

his flesh. "Now."
Palpatine gurgled and choked, bringing up one
floundering hand to try to pry her off. But in here he
had none of the Dark Side that had made him so
strong when Luke had faced him over Endor; his
father had made sure of that, and now it was his
mother who was going to finish the job.

They were working together, separated by death and

mirrors though they were, to kill the man who had
ruined their lives.

But Palpatine was still capable of fighting back. He

bucked in Padmé’s hold—headbutted her hard in the
face until blood splashed on her upper lip. She held
on tight as he turned red, but her grip was faltering,
faltering, and Luke rushed forwards from his paralysis
to grip him as well, though his skin was as clammy as
a wet fish. Palpatine spat at him.

His mother took the opportunity to remove one hand

from his throat, leaving red crescents where her
fingernails had been, and pull her hairpiece from her
head with a tumble of curling locks.

“This,” she declared coldly, “is how tyranny dies.” And

then she drove the pointed teeth of the jeweled comb
directly into Palpatine’s chest, between the third and
fourth ribs.

Luke had expected a scream. A violent one. But

instead, there was only a short, sharp exhalation of
shock as Palpatine seemed to realize what was
happening.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, Luke placed

his hand over his mother’s, helping her push the
comb in deeper.

Palpatine hit the floor as soon as his mother pulled

her comb from his chest, and Luke took several steps
backward. His mother stepped around the corpse,
taking his face into her hands and turning his head
from side to side, releasing it when her inspection
came back with results to her satisfaction.

When they turned back to decide what to do,

Palpatine's body flickered like an old hologram. It was
absorbed back into the fabric of the mirror world as
they watched in shock.

Padmé touched her nose gently and wiped away the

blood, then turned to the newly-formed mirror. They
both stared out into the empty throne room, an odd
feeling of melancholy settling on them.

"That," Padmé said, "was satisfying."

Luke laughed. His mother smiled.

"But how do we get out?"

Luke frowned, and eyed the mirror again. It was an

instinct to reach out with the Force, one that had
foiled him every time he tried it in this dimension and
found only nothing, but now... When he reached out
to investigate, he felt it.

He eyed where the surface of the mirror would be—

and made to extend a hand right through it.

“Give your sister my love.”

He stopped to look back at his mother. “What? No,

you’re coming with me!” This was reminding him too
much of the second Death Star, he couldn’t leave
another parent behind!

“Luke," she sighed. "I felt the truth of it as we

destroyed Palpatine. I can't leave. I have been dead
for as long as you’ve been alive. There’s no body for
my spirit to return to. If I go through the mirror, I will
pass on. And I won’t be able to return the way those
who are one with the Force can.”

Luke sniffled, ducking his head. His mother clicked

her tongue, lifting his head until she could look him in
the eyes.

"Luke," she said. "Give your sister my love. And..."

He tips his head to the side, making a little noise of

confusion.

"Tell your father I love him, won't you?"

Luke rushed forwards, wrapping his arms around his

mother. She startled, but rested her arms around his
shoulders.

"I'll come to visit you," he mumbled into the rich

purple fabric of his mother's gown. She chuckled
softly, one hand coming up to the back of his head to
card through his hair.

"I don't doubt you on that, my son."

They sat there in silence for a minute, perhaps more,

clinging tightly to each other. Luke could smell the
light scent of floral perfume and buried his face into
her shoulder.

When he finally pulled away, there was a damp spot

on Padmé's dress, but neither of them mentioned it.

Luke turned to face the mirror and drew in a deep

breath, steeling himself.

His mother placed a hand on his shoulder, pushing

him ever so slightly. "Go. Live for me." Luke twisted
his head back in time to see Padmé smile, genuine
and hopeful. "And the next time you visit, you can
bring your sister along."

With a nod, Luke reveled in the feeling of her hand's

comforting weight—soft, warm, gentle—for a long
moment, before he stepped through the mirror.

There was no smoke when he stepped through, just a

strange shudder, followed by darkness and suddenly,
he was being jolted awake.

"LUKE!" Leia practically shouted straight in his face as

she pulled him upright. "Thank the Force you're alive,
we got back and you... I thought..."

She was crying. Leia never cried, not even when she
talked about Alderaan, but she was crying now, her
eyes red and her face swollen and blotchy as she
hugged him close. "Don't scare me like that!"

"We were in the middle of a show, she jumps up and

started running, I think she could've beaten the
Falcon if she'd put her mind to it," Han added, sitting
on Luke's other side and putting a hand on his back.
"What happened, kid?"

Luke's eyes drifted over to the mirror. The glass was

cracked, and the gem at the top had fallen to pieces
that were now scattered across the floor, but his
mother was still there.

Her position had changed, so that she was holding

her bloodstained comb in her hands, just over her
heart, while her curls tumbled loosely. And she was
smiling, warmly, serenely... maternally.

"I'm not sure you'll believe me when I tell you."

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