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At night on Naboo, Padmé Amidala’s tomb lit above the mourning city, on the same dark, sandy street where Padmé and her handmaidens were rescued by Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first hours of the invasion of Naboo, two cloaked figures hurry through the shadows, step into an alley, and tap a rhythm on a door.
Inside, a single light hangs above a round silver table. Surrounding the table are a number of figures also dressed in dark clothes, many with their hoods up. Murmurs cease as the door is opened by Captain Typho, and the two figures enter. Once the door shuts again, Senator Amidala’s former aide Dormé leans into the light, still in the crimson robes she wore during Padmé’s funeral procession, Moteé hooded at her side.
“Sabé. Tonra,” Dormé says to the newcomers as Captain Typho retakes his place at the table. “What have you learned?”
Sabé steps to the table opposite Typho and shucks back her hood. Although the years have lessened their resemblance, her face still looks a great deal like Padmé’s. Tonra pushes back his own hood and positions himself behind Sabé’s shoulder, the two of them slightly apart from the others. The others with hoods follow their example.
“The truth,” Sabé tells the room. “From a man who was with her when she died.”
A blonde woman, Eirtaé, no longer in the former handmaidens’ mourning robes, demands from Typho’s side, “What happened? Padmé Amidala doesn’t just die.”
Sabé’s voice is clear and cold, with shades of the Amidala as she answers. “She was murdered. By an agent of the Empire.”
Breath hisses between teeth, and the darkened figures shift in their places.
“Does your contact know the identity of the murderer?” asks Typho.
Sabé and Tonra shake their heads.
“Why would she leave Corusant?” asks Eirtaé, her pale face mottled red with frustration. “The battle was over. The war was over.”
Moteé and Typho exchange a look, but Tonra is the one who answers. “The father of her child was a Jedi.”
Murmured exclamations circle the room, surprise and horror, grief anew. They are extinguished just as quickly.
Her voice shaking, Dormé asks, “Who was it?”
Moteé looks at Ellé across from her and answers, “Master Skywalker.”
In her crimson cloak, Rabé shifts, drawing the others’s attention and says his name, just as she did so many years ago as her queen prepared to address the Senate. “Anakin Skywalker?" To those surrounding her, she asks, "The boy from Tattooine?”
At Sabé’s answering nod, Rabé's voice lowers. “He must be dead. Like all the others.”
Before this heavy loss can settle over then, Saché speaks from the edges of the room. “And their child with them.” After a beat, she lifts her face, the scars on her still-young face sharpening in the light. A steel edge in her expression, she says, “Sabé, you were the queen’s shadow. But we all served the Amidala. What will we do now?”
Slowly, Sabé’s hand emerges from her cloak and presses a flat disc on the table's surface. The others lean in to look. “We will find whoever murdered our queen. And we will kill them.”
Around the table, faces shift from pain and curiosity to bewilderment.
Studying each of them, Tonra still at her shoulder, Sabé lays her hands on the table’s edge and leans forward. “We will honor Padmé and the democracy she fought for.”
As resolve settles over them, Sabé pushes the flat disc to the center of the table, the symbol of the rebellion shining beneath the single light.
“We will rebel.”