Office Annex
Palace
Alderaan
"Reunion?" Luke and Leia both asked in unison.
There was a long pause as the four adults in the room considered what to say next.
Luke broke the silence, "Wait a minute, aren't you Ben? Ben Kenobi?"
The old fox nodded his gray head, "Indeed, young Luke. It has been some time since we last met."
The boy tilted his head and frowned, "So I guess since you are here, you're not just an eccentric hermit."
"No, indeed, I am not."
"Are you General Kenobi?" Leia inquired, "Who fought during the Clone Wars?"
Kenobi shot a quick glance at Vader, and nodded.
There was another uncomfortable silence.
"So what did you mean about a reunion?" Leia finally demanded, "Luke, the son of Vader, and I haven't met before."
Vader opened his mouth to answer, then shut it abruptly. He glanced at Luke, who was staring at him with puzzled eyes. His discovery of Luke had been a dream come true, to find a living son who eagerly welcomed the introduction of such an unconventional (monstrous) father into his life.
He expected no such enthusiasm from Princess Leia Organa. The Organas were known opponents to Palpatine's administration, and he had sensed the princess's distaste and fear when she had seen him.
Vader glanced at the other adults in the room, but they seemed just as paralyzed as he was.
Vader made a quick decision and gestured. A moment later, a datapad flew into his hand from the next room. He had placed it in his now discarded robes in the main office. It had pictures of the Lars to assist in the search for them. But the datapad also held ...
Reverently, the Dark Lord found the correct holo and held the datapad out to Leia Organa, who took it with hesitant hands.
"This is ..." Vader began, and stopped. Could he really say her name after all these years?
"Padme Naberrie Amidala of Naboo," the princess stated. She shot a look at her parents, who both wore looks of agonized concern.
"I've seen her holo before, and read a few of her speeches," Leia continued, "What's the connection?"
"She was your birth mother, Leia," Breha said, finally managing to vocalize through her distress.
The girl's eyes grew wide in disbelief, "What?!"
"You look a lot like her," Luke said helpfully, having sidled over next to his unknown twin to look at the image, "Same eyes and hair. She's gorgeous, isn't she?"
Leia's face wore a smile now, and her eyes were brimming with unshed tears, "Yes. But more than that, she was a wonderful person. That's amazing. But why ... why didn't you tell me earlier about her?"
"Because ..." Bail said.
"Because ..." Breha repeated.
"Because ..." Obi-wan began, then stuttered to a stop.
Vader suppressed a sigh. Apparently he would have to be the mature adult here.
"Because I am your biological father, Princess Leia. And the Organas have done everything in their power to suppress that knowledge."
The twins' faces, with different eyes and noses and chins, suddenly wore identical expressions of disbelief and shock.
Luke's eyes stayed on his mask longer, because Leia, after a frozen moment, turned toward the Organas with eyes wide, her head shaking 'no.'
Apparently, the girl shared her biological mother's ability to understand subtle facial cues, for within 10 seconds the girl's face shifted from disbelief to horror.
"No ... no. That's not true. That's impossible!"
"Search your feelings," Vader said as gently as he could, "You know it to be true."
"No! No! I am not ... I am not the daughter of a murderer, a tyrant, a slaver. I can't be!"
"Hey," Luke snapped suddenly, waking up out of his stupor, "That's my father ... our father, apparently ... you are talking about. It's a shock, I know, but there is no need to be rude about it!"
Leia turned on her brother, her eyes flashing, "Rude? Rude? Do you have any idea what your father has done? The children he has destroyed, the aliens he has enslaved?"
"Leia!" Bail said, raising his voice.
She stopped, eyes suddenly filled with tears, and then she rushed into Bail's arms, even as she dissolved into heartrending sobs of distress.
Vader watched this display with a mixture of unease, guilt, and anger, and was startled when he felt a small tug on his arm.
Luke's brow was furrowed with concern and bewilderment, "Father, why don't we go next door? I think Leia needs a few minutes with ... with her parents."
He sighed internally, but allowed himself to be shepherded into the next room, with Obi-Wan Kenobi trailing behind. The annex office had one window which was 3 stories up, so there was no chance Leia could escape him. Furthermore, he kept a Force tendril on her location and mental state.
The results were unsettling, to say the least. Princess Leia's Force sense was a turbulent maelstrom of horror and grief.
No indeed, Leia Organa did not welcome this news.
"So if Padme Amidala is the princess's mother, who is mine?" Luke asked in a disturbed tone.
The father was so puzzled that he could only gape (behind his mask) at his son.
It was Kenobi who explained, "You and Leia are twins, Luke. Padme is your mother as well."
The young face grew slack with astonishment, then tightened in anger.
"She's my twin sister? How could you not tell me that, Father? How could you hide my twin from me?"
The fury which had been rigidly held under control, and crowded out by bewilderment, and mitigated by the Senator's words, suddenly burst forth.
"I didn't know about your sister's existence until I walked into this room less than an hour ago, until the Senator told me about her. Kenobi separated you." Vader hissed in rage, his hand leaping to his lightsaber. It was in his hand, and lit blood red, in less than a second. "He hid you both from me, and sent you to that sandblasted planet to be kidnapped by Tuskens, to suffer, to be enslaved ..."
The laser sword swept forward only to clash against Kenobi's blade which had also sprung to life, lit blue like the color of Anakin Skywalker's eyes.
Obi-Wan's face was determined if sad, "I'm sorry, Vader, but given your regrettable decisions, we felt we had to hide them, for their safety."
The two exchanged a few more blows, both without injury, before Vader spoke again, his voice calmer, and yet full of righteous indignation.
"You should have kept them together, at least. You should have brought them both here. They would have grown up together, in affluence, as friends, as siblings. Luke would have been safe from ..."
At this point, two large cushions, thrown by Luke, suddenly flew through the air, one toward each warrior.
Both Kenobi and Vader reacted instinctively, cutting the cushions in half.
And a wild blizzard of pelikki feathers filled the space between the two combatants. Kenobi found himself coughing violently, and Vader had to use the Force to brush feathers from his air intakes.
The brief distraction gave Luke time to act. He stepped firmly and courageously between the two lightsabers, his eyebrows furrowed with irritation, "Stop it, both of you! This is not the time to be fighting, and certainly not killing. Ben, could you please go in with Le ... with my sister and wait there until Father calms down? Would that be all right?"
Kenobi blinked in astonishment, then smiled slightly, "It would be my pleasure, young Luke. So long as your father agrees."
Vader felt surprisingly silly surrounded by a cloud of feathers, and feeling silly made him angry. But Luke was looking at him intently and hopefully, so he sighed and shut down his saber.
"Very well," he grated, "But this conversation is not complete."
Ben nodded even as he shut down his own saber before skirting carefully around father and son and going into the annex next door.
Vader followed the old man with his gaze before looking down at Luke, who was positively glaring at him.
"He saved my life, you know," his son said, "When I was 9. And then again when I was 11. I got caught out in the desert with speeder malfunctions and other personal stupidity and Ben showed up in the nick of time. And I know he helped my aunt and uncle more than once in other ways."
"You should never have been on Tatooine at all," Vader said stubbornly, "I hated every year I lived there, and it was the last place on earth that he should have sent my son."
Luke stared at him for a long moment and then shook his head a little, "Father, I'm not stupid. I know that you've done some very cruel things. And since you won't talk about ... about Mother with me, I have to assume that something went very wrong in your relationship with her. It sounds like Ben felt like he had limited options."
The boy stepped forward now to place slender hands on his father's gauntleted arms, "I yelled at Leia in there for insulting you but she's not wrong. I grew up on the Outer Rim and I don't know much about politics but I do know the Empire is a rotten institution, and you ... you're its Chief Enforcer. Or you were."
Vader stilled, his rage suddenly quenched, his heart suddenly filled with the agonizing fear of rejection, "Do you ... are you ... do you regret being with me, my son?"
Luke looked startled and then distressed, "No, of course not! The day you found me was the best day of my life. And I love you. I always will. I just am asking you, begging you, to think about other people and their needs and struggles in this crazy situation. Please don't blame Leia for being upset, or the respective parental figures for making hard decisions."
Vader's head dipped low, his weary gaze fixed at the ground. In the room next door, Leia's horrified grief was sliding toward apathetic despair.
In front of him, his beloved son was projecting concern, and yes, devoted love.
"Very well, Son," he responded, "I will do my best to be patient with the Princess. With your sister."
"And Ben? And the Organas? And the Lars, for that matter? What are you going to do about them?"
Vader clenched his teeth, then forced himself to relax every available biological muscle in his body. He was angry, angry at the decisions that were made, at the heart breaking separation of his twins. Of the fact that he had lived 15 years of his life not knowing that he even had twins, and that they lived.
But his children loved and cared for their respective guardians, and thus ...
"I promise you I will not harm them, Son."
The blue eyes bored into him, demanding ...
"I promise on the Skywalker name."
/-
6 hours later
Princess Leia Organa's room
The door slid open and Leia tensed slightly, but didn't turn.
"Is it all right if I come in?" Luke's voice inquired nervously.
She shrugged, just a little, "If you must."
She was being petty and rude, but she couldn't manage to care.
There was a soft footfall and out of the corner of her eye, Leia saw Luke Skywalker (that was his surname, her mother had said) sit down crosslegged on the floor a meter away from her.
She kept her gaze fixed on the large window in front of her. The sunny day had given way to storms, and now angry raindrops flung themselves against the transparisteel, even as the wind howled and buffeted the delicate white flowers of the trees a few meters away from them.
There was a long silence, and to her surprise, Leia felt herself relax a little. Luke was, at the moment anyway, a restful presence. He was merely sitting, and she didn't feel pressure to talk or do anything.
Finally, she turned to look at him. He turned at the same moment, as if sensing her movement before it happened, and their eyes met.
She saw wonder in those blue eyes, and knew her own brown eyes showed similar wonder. To think that they had shared a womb 15 years ago, that they had shared the cries of birth before being separated for so long.
"I guess the weather reflects my mood," she said, with a head bob toward the window.
Her brother's brow frowned slightly in bewilderment, "I don't understand."
"It's raining," she said, spelling it out, "And dark, and windy. Crazy weather. Unsettling weather."
The youth (her twin!) smiled slightly, "I grew up on a desert planet, Princess. I spent hours and days and years of my life in the hot suns getting moisture 'vaporators to work so that we could draw water out of the atmosphere. I still can't believe that there are places where water falls from the sky. I think it's wonderful, like magic."
Her lips curved, delighted at the amazement in his voice, even as she said, "Please call me Leia. I'm your sister. What planet did you grow up on?"
"Tatooine, Outer Rim," Luke replied, with a heavy sigh, "It's a desert planet. Poor. Dangerous. I was abducted by a tribal group a little more than a year ago and sold into slavery. I escaped to Ryloth and then Father found me there, no doubt by the will of the Force, a couple of weeks ago."
There was so much in this short statement to unpack that Leia briefly felt overwhelmed, but she focused in on the most horrific statement, "You were enslaved?"
The boy nodded, his eyes downcast, "By a Hutt Lord named Jabba. I managed to escape after a week. My aunt and uncle who raised me fled here with Ben Kenobi because Jabba put a price on my head, and they were in danger. Your parents kindly gave them refuge on Alderaan and I can't wait to see them, but I did want to give Father some time to ... uh ... calm down."
Leia felt a lurch in her heart. Were her own parents safe from the erratic anger of the Dark Lord of the Sith?
"He won't harm them, Leia," Luke said, "He gave me his word."
Her eyes met his, full of challenge, "And can I trust the word of Darth Vader, the Emperor's Enforcer?"
She waited for anger, but Luke merely reached a gentle and comforting hand out to her.
"Yes, you can, Princ ... Leia," her brother responded. "You're right about him, of course. He's done terrible things. Cruel things. But he genuinely cares about us and he will not break his word to me. He's from Tatooine and he knows the power of names, and he promised on his name."
Leia lifted a puzzled eyebrow, even as she felt her chest unclench. She didn't know Tatooine, or its customs, but she trusted the certainty in her twin's voice, trusted the inner Voice in her heart which told her that Luke was a faithful and good person.
She decided that she liked her brother.
"Thank you, Luke."
