"What's this?" Luke studied a box sitting on the low table in Leia's living room. It was a nondescript box, easily missed, the only peculiar thing about it was that there seemed to be no way to open it– No wait, there was a keypad on side facing away from him.
"It was sitting on my doorstep, addressed to you," his sister gave him a questioning look, "I thought you might know what it was."
Luke furrowed his brow and fiddled with the keypad. After several failed attempts to open it and curiosity getting the better of him, the Jedi pulled out his lightsaber and sliced off the top. Inside were several official looking papers. Leia rummaged around a bit and pulled out a document.
"It's a deed," she announced, "500 Republica…. that's here on Coruscant."
"Is it?" her brother said absently, staring at another paper, "Leia– Leia, I think this is Dad's stuff."
The brunette woman went wide-eyed and threw the deed back into the box, "What makes you say that?"
Luke showed her the document. It was a marriage certificate.
"This certifies that Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Naberrie were united in marriage on this day, the–"
"I get it," Leia snapped, standing up.
"Leia wait," Luke grabbed her hand, "I know you don't like Dad–"
"Don't call him that," she seethed, "He wasn't a father, not to you and definitely not to me." She pulled her hand out of his grasp and walked towards her bedroom.
The Jedi gave an exasperated sigh, why couldn't Leia understand? His mysterious family was important to him and Leia was apart of it too, whether she liked it or not. He grabbed the box and followed the senator into her room.
"Look," he tried again, pulling out the discarded deed, "Like you said, this is on Coruscant, we can swing by for just a few minutes and then I promise that I won't bother you anymore about Fath– Vader."
500 Republica turned out to be a high-end apartment complex that catered to celebrities and powerful governmental figures, with the specific apartment Luke and Leia were looking for located at the very top, a penthouse. Despite all the hints that a very rich, prosperous person lived there, it looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the Clone Wars: dust was coating everything and an unpleasant musty smell filled the air.
"My father lived in this building," Leia said wistfully, looking through cupboards full of insects and rodent nests, "When he was a senator."
She turned when Luke didn't answer and found him making a beeline towards the former occupants bedroom, a hopeful expression painted on his face. Grimacing, Leia hurried after him.
The bedroom looked like, well, a fairly standard bedroom; there was a bed in the center, pushed against the wall, a small table on each side, a closet, a shelf, and joining bathroom. Whoever had lived here before (and Leia was afraid she had very clear idea who), didn't spend much time with interior decoration.
"Luke," Leia reprimanded, "You can't just go rummaging through someone's closet!"
Her brother threw the doors to the closet open and gave a slow whistle once the dust cleared away, "This lady certainly knew how to dress, why don't you wear stuff like this Leia?"
Leia's eyebrows nearly rose right off her face when she took a look at the wardrobe, crammed full of dresses of different sizes, styles, fabrics, colors and headdresses and shoes, it was like a clothing store stuffed into one closet. She looked down at her white dress, she thought it elegant this morning, but now it looked plain compared to this finery.
"Because," she answered, "I am a respectable senator, not a garish celebrity."
"Well this 'garish celebrity' might be our mother," Luke pulled out a cloak; similar to the one Obi-Wan had worn during her rescue from the Death Star and the one her twin wore now. It was a Jedi's cloak.
Leia stiffened and drew away from the closet, instead focusing on one of the bedside tables. Of course this was their mother's apartment, why else with Vader have kept its deed along with his certificate of marriage? Holding her breath, she pulled out one of the drawers; it was empty. Letting out the breath, she pulled out the one below that, this one held a jewelry box.
Handling it like it was made of thin paper, she showed it to Luke, who gave a startled yell when he opened it.
"It's just hair," she rolled her eyes, "Grow up." She pulled out the braid of light brown hair and dangled it in front of her brother, smirking when he eyed with apprehension. A little part of her briefly wondered what it would be like to have grown up with a twin brother, would she have teased Luke like she did now?
"Yeah, but that's like fifty year old hair!" Luke made a face, "It's disgusting! And why in the world would our mother keep fifty year old hair with her!"
Leia laughed, "It probably belonged to someone special, like a sibling or–"
"Or a spouse?" Luke supplied.
"I was going to say child," she replied through gritted teeth.
"Whoa, that's a funny thought," the blond Jedi said, "What if our parents had children before us?"
"I don't think so," Leia sighed, "If this really is our mother apartment then we would have seen some evidence of a child living here, everything is too organized–"
"Not this closet," Luke interjected.
"–for a child to have lived here," Leia finished giving him a stink-eye.
Luke pulled out the second object the box held. It was a holo of a young man, he was sitting on the edge of a landing pad that looked remarkably similar to the one connected to this penthouse (of course, it was the same one) and was turned towards whoever had taken the holo, smiling manically. Leia wouldn't have been surprised if he jumped off the platform and into the Coruscant traffic as soon as the holo had been taken.
"See this?" Luke pointed to a braid of hair hanging from behind the man's ear, "It's probably the same one in the box."
"So this is…" Leia trailed off.
"Father," he nodded. "He looks like you," he added.
"He looks more like you," she frowned at him.
Luke set the box on the bed (a cloud of dust escaped when he did) and went to the other bedside table. Finding nothing he sped out of the room and disappeared down the hallway, with a strange expression on his face.
"Luke!" Leia called, "Stop leaving me places!" She snatched up the jewelry box and hurried after her brother.
The brunette senator discovered Luke inside an office on the other side of the apartment. It was neatly organized, but whoever had been in here last had left several flimsi's scattered over the desk. Luke was opening the drawers, violating personal space for the second time today.
"Great Maker Luke!" Leia said exasperatedly, "You can't just go through peoples things like this!"
"We have to find her Leia!" he said with a manic look on his face, similar to the one Anakin had in the holo they had found.
"No, we can't."
"She's our mother! We have to try!" the blonde man looked like he might start to cry and he ripped open the file cabinet, searching desperately for something Leia knew they would never find.
Leia sighed and bit her lip, "She's dead Luke, and we aren't going to find her."
"What?" the Jedi stopped, sheets of flimsiplast slowly glided to the ground.
"Darth-Anak…. Father killed her."
Luke's back hit the wall and he slowly slid down until he was sitting. Leia walked over sat beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder. "I told you she was dead on Endor."
"Yeah, but… but I dunno, I thought that maybe you were talking about your adopted mother or something."
"Padmé died right after we were born, my father told me when and how a few years before we met."
"Really? He didn't care if Father found out?" Luke asked.
"Well he didn't really put a name to her face, I pieced it together after a while, not the Vader part obviously, but I've known about Padmé since I was very young," Leia said softly, "I used– I used to pretend that our parents were galactic pirates that had to give me up because their life was too dangerous to have a little girl around and they wanted to keep me safe."
"Uncle Owen told me that our father was a navigator on a spice freighter," the blonde Jedi rest his chin on his knees, "I thought that the reason he wasn't around was because he got into some trouble with Jabba and had to stay out of the system and that one day when I was older I'd be on some other planet and he'd find me."
"Looks like they disappointed both of us."
"No," Luke shook his head, "They were both very noble people and both of them died for a very noble cause."
"Luke? Sorry to break it to you, but our mother didn't even try to live and our father was an insane machine who tried to kill both of us. They weren't exactly great parents."
"Well if you look at them like that they aren't."
"There's no other way to look at it!"
"What if Han tried to kill you while you were pregnant how would you feel?"
"Han would never do something like that! He wouldn't even think of it!"
"I guess Mom thought the same thing about Dad."
Leia didn't respond and looked up at her brother, his blue eyes were brimmed with tears and he looked so upset that she couldn't stand to see him like this anymore.
She leaned away from him and stuck out her hand, "My name's Leia… Skywalker, my parents are pirates, we live in our ship and go on adventures everyday. Would you like to hear one of them?"
Author's Note: When I was a kid I always wished that Luke and Leia found out they were twins earlier so they could have some awesome sibling bonding time.