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“Goodness, Leia, you’ve grown,” said Senator Mothma, smiling, and Leia braced herself for the rote words of condolence everyone else seemed compelled to give her. She hated the ritual, hated mumbling “Thank you,” when she wanted to scream. Her mother, the woman who had nursed her through her childhood illnesses, who had taught her to play grav-ball, who had gently guided her as she grew into her duties as Princess of Alderaan, was gone.
She didn’t want to talk about it with anyone.
But Mothma said, instead, “Your father tells me you’re hoping to run for Senator in a few years.”
“Yes,” Leia replied, startled. Mothma looked as composed as ever, cool and dignified in a way Leia could never hope to match. “I can’t run until I’m eighteen, but I’m studying as much as I can to prepare.”
“I have some texts you might find interesting,” said Mothma, raising one neat brow in a way that managed to suggest that these texts were not something Leia would encounter in her political science courses.
Leia took a deep breath. “Would you care to discuss it over lunch, Senator Mothma?”
The first text was a collection of political essays by a senator Leia had never heard of, Padmé Amidala of Naboo.
They were a revelation, the hints of the crumbling Republic they revealed nothing like what Leia had read about in her Imperially sanctioned texts. They filled in the gaps of what her parents had told her over the years. They envisioned a future--a future of justice and hope--that had never materialized.
To her shock and embarrassment, Leia found herself crying over a political essay for the first time in her life, wishing desperately that she could talk to a long-dead woman she had never met.
Three years later, Mon Mothma embraced her at her swearing-in ceremony as Alderaan’s new representative to the Imperial Senate. “Your mother would be proud of you,” she said, putting her hands on Leia’s shoulders. “I certainly am.”
“Is that all?” Mothma had already glanced down and begun to tidy her desk--just because the Emperor was dead did not mean there was no more work, after all.
Leia hesitated, then sat down again. It was as good a time as any to ask. “Did you know that Padmé Amidala was my birth mother, when you gave me those essays?”
Mothma went very still for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “Or--I did not know, but I suspected. You are very like her in some ways.”
Leia felt her face heat at the compliment. Her, like the woman she had idolized as a teenager! She didn’t think she was anything like as sharp, or as brave, but from Mothma, who had known Senator Amidala, it meant something.
“I have something for you,” Mothma said, opening a drawer and fumbling around at the back of it. “Sabé gave it to me years ago and told me I would know who to give it to, someday. I think she meant you to have it. It was--Padmé’s. Your mother’s.”
The object she slid across the desk was a datapad, albeit one so antique and clunky Leia had only seen objects like it in museums. In one corner was a peculiar roughened depression. She could not quite bring herself to touch it.
“It’s DNA-locked,” Mothma said quietly. “I expect you and Luke, and maybe her sister Sola, are the only ones who could open it now.”
Leia swallowed, feeling a sudden selfish urge to keep it to herself, for a while. But no, she ought to share it with Luke right away. They could read it together. “Thank you,” she said, and her voice came out a little choked. “I--thank you.” She stood up and slipped the datapad into her pocket, then scrubbed the back of her hand over her suddenly watering eyes.
“I am sorry you could not know her,” Mothma said quietly, standing. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” Leia said. On impulse, she flung her arms around Mothma’s shoulders and hugged her, as if she were still the enthusiastic teenager who seemed half a lifetime away.
“If I had had a daughter,” Mothma said, sounding a little choked herself, “I would have wanted her to be like you.”
And for a perfect moment, Leia felt that somehow they all embraced her: Breha and Padmé and Mothma, all of the women who had been her mothers, all of the women who had given her the stars.
