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The first plea for their return came only a week after they had landed on Kamino.
A group of senators who apparently could both do math and understand how public relations worked sent a somewhat sheepish formal request for the Jedi Order to consider signing a new contract with the Republic for mutual aid and protection. It also asked that they consider reestablishing an embassy or something similar on Coruscant.
Mace brought it to Padmé, holding the datapad out from his body like it was a snake about to bite.
“What’s that?” she asked, looking up from her own correspondence. If she called it ‘correspondence’ nobody nagged her about spending an hour or two gossiping with Breha over a heavily encrypted private chat.
“It appears to be the first group of people who have realized how colossally they fucked themselves over by making us leave,” he answered, dropping it on the table in front of her.
Padmé flicked through the document, her small smile growing bigger with each new page.
“The graph of the projected poverty line on page eighty-three is very moving,” she said. “As well as the one of crime rate statistics now that the Guard is gone on page one-thirteen.”
“Do you think we should negotiate a response?” he asked.
Padmé stared at him. “Why are you asking me? You’re in charge of the Order.”
“And you were in charge of a planet, and one of the only senators who ever got anything done,” he retorted. “I want your advice. Not that you have to give it, if you want to leave politics altogether,” he said quickly. “But somehow I don’t think you want to, given that you were making a spirited argument for becoming Empress not two weeks ago.”
“Ah,” she said, and tapped back to the beginning of the document, looking at the names there. “Well. My advice is to archive this thing and go back to it when you need a laugh.”
“You don’t think they made some valid points about how our leaving affects the average citizen?”
“Oh, no, those are all true. But these projections are all missing the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“The Senate or the Empire or whatever it’s becoming getting off their lazy asses and running aid programs of its own,” she said, pushing the datapad back. “There’s already a framework and funding in place, as of a month ago. Either these people haven’t looked for it or they don’t want to use it. Sucks to be them.”
Mace blinked at her. “You’re rather . . . ruthless,” he said hesitantly.
“I didn’t lose half my sleep for weeks to Padma – which I do not begrudge – and the other half to drafting that damn proposal for infrastructure to replace the Order in case we had to do exactly what we did – which I do rather begrudge – for it to be ignored without even a good argument made against it,” she said evenly. “They have the resources to start digging themselves out of the hole we left behind if they’re not too proud to look for them.”
“The literal hole,” he said, distracted, and they both giggled.
“I wish I could have seen their faces when they came to look at it. Oh well. Maybe I can get Bail to send me the pictures.”
Mace winced. “I’m glad we brought Senator Chuchi, but I feel like we abandoned most of our other allies in our haste to leave.”
“They have their own worlds to care for,” Padmé said simply. “Riyo is a bit of an odd case. Like me. Most worlds pick who they put up for election by family line. It’s rigged before it starts. If they hold an election at all and don’t have a senator appointed or a hereditary seat. Naboo and Pantora are unusual.”
“Oh fuck,” said Mace, abruptly thinking of a new crisis when she said ‘family line’. “Mandalore.”
“What about it?”
He struggled to put his nebulous thoughts into words. “They’re not part of the Republic, but they’re . . . kind of allied with us, aren’t they? Or at least they are friendly. Ish. We haven’t told them a thing about what’s happened since we pulled back from the war, and that’s been at least two months.”
Padmé shrugged. “Satine is a grownup, she knows how to place a holocall. I’m not going to hold her hand through asking how we’re doing.”
Mace stared at her again.
“What?”
“I have never seen this side of you, and I suddenly understand why you and Anakin get along.”
A small rueful smile crossed her face. “I needed therapy, after my time as Queen was over,” she said quietly. “I gave and gave of myself and it nearly killed me. I had to learn how to set boundaries and keep them. How to really understand that if I never think of myself I will just burn out and have nothing left to help other with. I’ve been emotionally distancing myself from the Republic and the Senate for some time now, and their kicking us out was the final straw. My allegiance lies with my family now. With you.”
“Well, thank goodness for that,” he said half under his breath. Padmé grinned.
“Just send these kind of requests to me, if you don’t want to have to deal with them,” she offered. “What’s your stance on accepting a reasonable request? What do you consider reasonable?”
Mace frowned. “Nothing that makes establishing a permanent post in Republic space, or on Coruscant, a condition,” he said at last. “Definitely not if they specify we have to keep it staffed by anything but Knights and the diplomatic corps. Nothing involving us lending them money or material assets. I don’t trust them to repay a loan or return whatever they want to borrow. Nothing requesting a meeting with anyone alone. If anything tries to limit our searching for initiates I want to know immediately and we’ll have to do something about it.”
Padmé nodded, typing quickly.
“Lending relief aid to civilians in times of natural disaster or social crisis is acceptable, within our means at the time. Lending medical help as well. I would not object to a contract for us to be asked to help with mass evacuations during such a time if it doesn’t have too many strings attached. If they want us to be treated as an independent nation and elect and send a senator . . . That’s the same as the initiates. Tell me immediately. I’m not opposed to the idea but it has to be reasonable on all sides. Anything from individual worlds acting on their own, I'll seriously consider too. We’re – speaking for the Council here – mostly opposed to anything coming from the entire Senate. Oh, and if they try to take the vod’e away from us we will not hesitate to use lethal force,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “Though that should be pretty obvious by now.”
~
The second came a few days later, but it was less of a plea for aid than a command to return the Coruscant Guard immediately, signed by most of the remaining military leaders and police chiefs. Mace printed out a copy just to set it on fire.
The third was a somewhat timid inquiry from Coruscant’s largest food bank, asking if it could still ask for the help of the Agricorps. Padmé brought that one to the Council, and after much deliberation they agreed to offer deliveries of whatever they could spare, in a neutral location off Coruscant and not in the Core.
The fourth was along the lines of the first, except it was signed by a much larger group of senators.
“All of these are from worlds fairly far out,” Padmé commented, looking it over critically. “Looks like the crime rate has gone up and inflation is rising to match. I didn’t expect it to go that fast, not through the whole Republic.”
“I still feel guilty about not helping,” Mace said, sitting on her desk.
“Don’t sit on that, you’ll get – ink all over your robes,” she said, and sighed. “Don’t worry, I have lots, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to live with that weird stain now. Unless you can get it out with the Force?”
“That would be frivolous,” Mace said solemnly, twisting to look sadly at the large black blot in a rather embarrassing place. “Fortunately, I am a Sith now and frivolity is very nearly required.”
He made a good try, but the stain remained. “Dammit.”
“Oh well,” Padmé said practically. “You’ve got a set of robes you can remodel in now.”
“Why do you even have ink?”
“Signatures,” she said, and did not elaborate. “Speaking of frivolity, how is the zipline project coming along?”
He brightened up. “Splendidly. The hardware was in place when the Temple grounded itself, though we did have to move some of it. It wanted us to smack right into walls in a few places. I don’t know what that was about. Now we’re just figuring out how to make them easily accessible by everyone while still being safe –“
Padmé snorted.
“—and durable. What?”
“Safe,” she said, and snorted again. “Safe, from the maniacs who run around cliff-diving and waving laser swords and insisting that they’ll be fine after a nap when they’ve got actual broken bones.”
“First, you have a point with the first two, and second, the third you can blame on Yoda’s disaster of a lineage,” he said primly. “I do not have an allergy to the healers like they do, and I have made sure that Depa and Caleb do not either.”
“How?”
He sagged a little, right back into the puddle of ink. “Bribery?”
Padmé looked thoughtful.
“Yes, it probably would work on Anakin.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. “Stop reading my mind.”
“I wasn’t. It was just pretty obvious what you were thinking.”
“You’ve got ink all over your backside now,” she said mildly. Mace leapt off her desk and swore.
“So I assume this request is going in the file alongside the others?”
“Yes,” he said. “Unless you think there’s a threat in it that we should pay attention to.”
~
The fifth through fourteenth requests they received were all along the same lines. Different groups of senators trying to bribe or guilt the Order into coming back, a few appeals for help from organizations they had supported heavily in the past ranging in tone from apologetic to sheepish, a few more angry letters from the military that were more incoherent rants and threats of court-martialing than anything comprehensible.
The fifteenth piece of official correspondence addressed to the Jedi Order was different.
“So they did go for an empire after all,” Padmé said to herself, examining the letterhead; it had an inverted form of the symbol of the Republic, though this one had only six spokes instead of eight. “I wonder who Emperor Ret is? I’ve never heard of anyone by that – hold on. No, that doesn’t make any sense. It must just be a homonym. But if Darth Vader and Mas Amedda are their seconds, they must be someone nasty. At least this one doesn’t order us to come back.” She regarded the letter cautiously.
“You called?” said Mace, kicking open the door to her office. She thought he looked a little ridiculous in a rain poncho almost longer than he was tall and holding a bucket in either hand, and apparently she didn’t do a good enough job of keeping her face blank or her shields up, for he suddenly looked embarrassed. “Uh. I was fishing with Ponds and Caleb,” he muttered, and put the buckets outside in the hall.
“Do you know any nasty Sith named Ret?” she asked, ignoring the way his rain poncho was dripping all over her floor and visitors’ chair.
“No,” he said. “But we don’t know a lot of names for the other kind of Sith. It’s not like they introduce themselves a lot without immediately trying to murder you. Did we get hate mail?”
“The Galactic Republic has been officially replaced by the Galactic Empire,” she said, and held out the datapad. “Darth Vader is at its head, second only to the Emperor. That’s the thing Plo fought, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he said, all of his casualness vanishing as he read through the proclamation. “Well. That’s pretty clear, isn’t it?”
“Very clear,” she said, and sighed. “I just wish it didn’t extend to the vod’e, too. That’s not fair.”
“Damn right it isn’t,” he said grumpily. “We just got done with a war, why do we have to turn around and go right into another one? Probably. I’ll ask if they want to wait a while.”
“Wait, what?”
He stared at her. “This says that if any ‘Jedi’ –” he made finger quotes mockingly “—or clone trooper is caught in Empire space, they’ll be executed immediately. I already told you, if anyone threatens the vod’e we respond with lethal force.” He got up. “Sorry to run, Padmé, but I’ve got to talk to the Marshal Commanders about this. Don’t worry about writing up a response, we’ll handle it. Thanks for letting me know so fast.”
“Mace!” she shouted after him as he snatched up his buckets and set off. “Mace Windu, don’t you fucking dare start another damn war just because someone looked weird at – dammit.”
Padmé put her head in her hands.
“Who said what?” came a very familiar shriek from down the hall. “Fucking right we’re starting another war! Or do you want to work on the necromancy first?”
“Ani, no,” she mumbled hopelessly. “Oh dear.”
“Er,” someone said, and she looked up to see Sabé and Fox hovering in her doorway.
“I think the Council is going to declare war on the new Galactic Empire because they don’t like your brothers,” she said weakly to Fox. He looked thoughtful.
“I guess we’ll need to brush up on our commando training,” said Sabé, which made Fox look at her very sappily and did not help Padmé’s mental health at all.
“I don’t think we should declare war on anyone quite yet?” she said. “I mean, we only just got here.”
Fox shrugged. “We’re getting bored,” was all he offered, and then after a moment of thought, “I’d love to punch a racist with official approval backing me up.”
“Fine!” she said, throwing her hands in the air. “I think this is a dumb impulse decision, but I suppose if it’s the ‘will of the Force’ or whatever –”
“It very well may be!” said Qui-Gon, manifesting abruptly in the chair. “The Force is ever-changing, mysterious –”
He broke off with a strangled gurgle as Padmé leapt over her desk and tackled him to the floor before hauling him up by his collar and slamming him into the wall, which was pretty impressive since she was very short and he was very tall.
“Stop. Stalking. My. Family,” she hissed at him.
He nodded frantically.
“Now go away. And don’t bother Anakin or Obi-Wan or Cody or Rex and if you go anywhere near Padma without an invitation I will feed you your own liver.”
He melted rather sheepishly through the wall and vanished.
“What?” she asked, turning around to see Fox and Sabé staring at her in shock. “It’s getting annoying. I don’t know if it’s a Jedi thing or a Qui-Gon thing but he’s got no sense of personal boundaries and can’t take a hint to save his life.” She dusted off her hands. “Hm, you might be right about the commando training though, that was very cathartic.”
“He’s a ghost,” Sabé said.
“Yeah, I know. That’s how he keeps popping up even when I lock the door.”
“He’s a ghost,” she repeated a little more forcefully. “How did you do that to him?”
Padmé blinked. “I don’t know,” she said uncertainly, and stared at her hands. They looked perfectly normal.
Fox still looked thoughtful.
“Ani can touch him?” she offered.
“You’re not him. You’re not even Force-sensitive, are you?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “I’ve never been tested.”
“Do you want to be?” Fox asked.
“Not really.”
“Okay then.”
They looked at each other.
There was a crash in the distance.
“I think we should probably go see if we’re officially at war again,” he said, and turned to lead the way out of Padmé’s office.
She picked up the ink bottle on her way out. Just in case.
Remembering that there were things they could not do, even with prodigious and complex displays of mastery over the Force, kept the idiots she loved as family and friends humble.