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"He's hiding," she says, amusement blossoming in both her tone and the way she can't seem to stop grinning like a lovesick fool.

"I'd offer up some of his hiding places, but I don't actually know all of them and don't think he'd appreciate me sharing with you the ones I do know."

Yeah, he doesn't miss the way she's smiling. He has a feeling he'd done his share of it even before Hoth, and if this nice woman likes Anakin so much maybe there's hope after all.

"It can wait," he says, and it's entirely true. He could probably talk to Kenobi about it, instead, but that's a whole different set of issues. "Besides," and he looks a little awkward, a little out of his depth, "I'd meant to meet you before now, anyway. Just figured I'd have Leia or Luke with me when I did. Or that you'd have Goldenrod."

"Goldenrod?"

It takes her moment to realize he's talking about Threepio. How he even knows about the droid is beyond her, but she's content to placate whatever other thoughts threaten to plague her with the notion that Leia probably told her about him.

Unlike her husband, there are things that Padmé just isn't keen on knowing. The parts she does are unsettling enough. (Like her absence. Anakin's fall.)

"Threepio is assisting my handmaidens with preparations for tonight's debate. Should I have him brought here?"

Han shakes his head emphatically. "No, that's fine. He interrupts enough as it is without the added opportunity."

Which isn't something Leia would've told him, or known to tell him. Another little oddity, another confirmation of what goes on into the lives of these people from the future from this time that isn't her. Han seems to realize it and looks sheepish.

"Should I go?"

Padmé is, perhaps, the only one outside of Anakin's own mother who had developed a certain genuine fondness for the crotchety droid. His personality was unique, but he was surprisingly well suited to playing assistant to a Galatic Senator. Much better than whatever he was doing on the Lars' moisture farm, judging by how quick Owen was to return the droid to his step-brother.

"No." There grin that pricks the corners of her mouth is almost mischievous in nature. "Ani's not the only one who hides from the spotlight."

Did you notice there was nobody else on this ship, Han? The senator has shed her attendants, her bodyguards, and everyone else who's slated to keep an eye on her.

Which, in her husband's eyes, probably means the duty of watching her has now fallen in your lap, Han.

He's noticing it now, but what he's noticing even more is --

"Ani?"

And he is trying very hard to not laugh.

She clamps a hand over her mouth, wincing visibly. The freedom to talk about Anakin without having to play it off as professional, of being able to call him her husband with someone who wasn't supposed to be a child of hers in another life, apparently came with consequences. Such as blurting out your husband's childhood nickname.

"Pretend you didn't hear that. It's a nickname from another life. He wouldn't appreciate you using it."

He does laugh at that, and nods his agreement. "Don't worry. I don't need to give him another reason to be annoyed with me."

"I'm serious. His mother--"

She was saying too much, but she also knew that the likelihood of Han hearing this from Anakin himself was slim to none.

"His mother used to call him that, and she's not around anymore. Did he tell you that we first met when we were children?"

That's enough to sober the conversation. It's odd that now he's thinking about Tiion Sal-Solo and her brat Thrackan torturing pets, and how despite what he knows about Vader, the wealth of his experience, he can't imagine Padmé speaking like this about Anakin if he had ever been like that.

Han shakes his head, "No. Doesn't really talk much to me, though. Just because I came back with the twins doesn't make me family."

They are close. He is their person as much as Luke and Leia are his people, his good people. But 'family' is something different, especially to Anakin, as far as Han can tell. The lack of Force sensitivity just drives that particular wedge a little deeper.

"The twins," she echoes, something strange and almost distant settling into her expression.

Family is a hard word to apply to them. Blood was a powerful tie, but the word family meant more than that. She had blood relatives on Naboo that she wasn't on speaking terms with, either for differing political reasons (wherein they were unable to separate her personal life from her professional duties) or old quarrels that went back generations. And here, on Coruscant, she had family that she had no formal ties to.

Her handmaidens. Threepio. Members of the Loyalist Committee. Even Obi-Wan, for as much as Anakin might protest the idea that she saw him in such a light.

But those were all people she knew and trusted. Padmé didn't really know her children, and truth be told, a bulk of her faith in them was based solely on Anakin's confidence in them and their identity. Of what the Force -- a power the senator herself didn't possess -- was telling him.

"Whether you're family or not isn't really up to us to decide." Her and Anakin. "That's up to them, and you."

Han knows the feeling. There isn't much he considers family that's got the position through blood ties. Maybe it'd be different if he could feel it the way Luke and Leia and Anakin do, maybe not. He just knows that for now, despite being back in time the same as they are, he's still on the outside looking in a lot more than he'd like.

"I guess," and isn't that an insecure answer he'd really like to move past as he leans as casually as he can manage against the nearest bulkhead. "How'd a senator meet some Jedi kid on Tatooine anyway?"

"Oh, I wasn't a senator," she corrects. "At the time, I was Queen of Naboo, but he didn't know that at first. Nobody did. I think Master Jinn might have suspected, but we had everyone else fooled. Anakin included."

A Queen.

Of course Leia would've been a princess no matter what. Almost like she was destined to be worlds out of his league.

However, his entirely articulate response to that revelation is, "Oh," which he at least manages to make sound interested and curious instead of dumbfounded.

Padmé takes that as a sign to continue.

"I was fourteen, and my planet was under attack. We appealed to Coruscant, and they sent two Jedi -- Obi-Wan and his master, Qui-Gon Jinn -- to assist with the crisis. But staying on Naboo hadn't been an option. My ship was damaged and we were forced to divert course and land on Tatooine in hopes of acquiring parts for repair."

He listens, still leaning against the bulkhead, eyes on the floor as he tries to imagine these two as children. Her very much the same, just smaller. Anakin like some tiny, long haired version of the Luke he'd met on the same planet. It's odd, and he can't quite manage it, so he looks up.

"Pretty tough place to find parts."

"Our engines were failing," Padmé said simply. "We weren't left with much of a choice, and I wasn't about to stand by and let my people be captured by the Trade Federation if wound up dead in the water. I refused to leave myself in a position where my life could be used as a bargaining chip to get my government to fold and cave to their demands."

Even at fourteen, she had her head on tight. She'd gone into politics young, ambitious where other children were focused on having fun.

"Of course, Sabé and I had traded places long before we fled Naboo. If they had succeeded in capturing 'me,' it wouldn't have done them much good. I hid myself among the rest of my handmaidens and accompanied Qui-Gon to Mos Espa as a supposed 'agent' of the queen."

For his part, Han is trying his best to commit this to memory. He's almost certain Leia hasn't heard much of this story, and definitely certain Luke hasn't. They'd appreciate hearing it.

(She sounds a little like both of them. The protectiveness of her people he'd hear from Leia, the plan as elaborate and subtle as Luke probably tried to make his own.)

Even if he was having a little trouble following it, though that's because he's not up on his history and is trying to remember which part of the pre-Clone Wars years this was.

"Anakin--" Here, she genuinely falters. Odd for her. Padmé was usually so sure of her words, but in this instance, she isn't sure what Han knows and doesn't. Did Anakin tell him -- tell their children -- that he was born into slavery?

Uncertain of that, she decides to leave slavery out of this tale. The Hutts who owned him and his mother, the Toydarian who ordered him around, and what Qui-Gon ultimately did to buy him the freedom he had, unfortunately, been unable to obtain for his mother. Talk of Shmi's fate was also off the table.

"He worked at one of the shops we visited. He was a few years younger than me. Asked if I was an angel when I walked in," she laughs, blushing at the memory of Anakin's innocence.

She doesn't say it, and Han doesn't ask, but he knows Mos Espa's reputation. He knows those kinds of tells, and what few options there for some human kid 'working' in that place, for a kid that'd be willing to run away with the Jedi.

He keeps it light, though, letting his assumptions fall to the back of his mind because he's made this meeting enough of a disaster already, thank you very much, and he can't let his burgeoning reputation get further tied up in argumentative inquiries about this woman's husband. Then he tries to imagine Anakin spouting off a line like that but can't, so he imagines Luke doing it and it fits perfectly.

"Pretty good line for a kid."

"He claims the spacers used to talk about them."

There's a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head, and it's telling that her preteen self hadn't thought much of his comment at the time. It had been nothing more than an innocent inquiry from a slave boy who had probably never seen a girl as clean and dolled up as her before. If anything, it had been depressing at the time to realize that her pristine wardrobe and good hygiene had made her appear angelic, of all things.

"Master Jinn sensed Anakin's Force-sensitivity almost right away. He arranged for him to be taken to Coruscant for training."

He almost laughs at the bit about the spacers. They do tend to talk a lot, from Han's experience, about things they aren't exactly ever clear on. (It is being filed away in his mind as something to tell the twins, a piece of the story they should know no matter how irrelevant it is to whatever destiny the Force has in mind for them.)

The arrangement could be a lot of things, but Han is hoping it's nothing terrible. He remembers, vaguely, scandals about the Jedi stealing babies from their homes, but he'd never been too upset about the idea when he'd have much preferred getting stolen by a weird religious order to Shrike.

"And you kept in touch?" Only a little suspicious, thanks to his current understanding of Jedi relationship policies.

A shake of her head. It makes the tassels hanging from her elaborate headdress shake and clank lightly against the metal holding her hair in place.

"No. After the blockade, I continued my duties as queen on Naboo while Anakin returned to Coruscant to train as a Jedi."

She says nothing of Qui-Gon Jinn's fate or how he wound up being trained by Obi-Wan instead of the man who found him. That's not a tale she likes to get into, especially since she's missing a lot of the details. Sith Lords and a prophecy Anakin's reluctant to speak of...

"It wasn't until a few yeas ago, when there was a threat on my life, that we met again. After a few near assassination attempts, the Senate assigned Obi-Wan and his padawan to protect me until the assassin was dealt with. Anakin accompanied me back to Naboo while Obi-Wan saw personally to the investigation."

And because there's some of her in Leia, too, she waves a hand dismissively in latent annoyance. "It was all very unnecessary."

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

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