The Sky Walkers
By Rey

Author's notes: Beware of confusion of address and thinking. Those are indeed the main ingredients of this chapter, unavoidable. And before you pick up your blaster canons at me for some irritation bound to happen in the selfsame chapter regarding a certain Captain Antilles, readers, please read the chapter notes at the end. Thank you.

Chapter 7: Definition

In her wildest imagination, and even in her worst nightmare, Leia had never ever conceived the notion of being held by Darth Vader other than by her throat. But now she was cradled in layers of his being: fenced inside by his hard large arms, pressed right against his not-so-hard midriff, practically swaddled by his heavy sleek cape, and shrouded by a fierce impenetrable wall of black warm flames that crooned mine-mine-mine-mine-protect-care-legacy. She felt like a… like a… well, like a child, really, or like a cherished rare treasure. She couldn't decide if she liked it or not.

She couldn't, because her tears hadn't even fully abated, when somewhere near her ears something that was most likely a commlink let out a quiet beeping noise, from the direction of Vader's – Father's? – beltside.

The black warm flames spiked with cold irritation, before one tendral reached out and yanked the offending object viciously from its resting place. "Admiral Finay," the deep synthesised voice snapped. The hostile vexation thickened, surging ferociously.

Leia shivered, gulping and gasping back her tears as quietly and quickly as she could. She wished she could shrink away from the harsh cold flames and the reach of his fence-like arms, too.

But the arms cradled her closer instead, and one hhuge hand even snaked up to her head, covering it, as if in an act of protection or afection, just as the part of the flames closest to her turned warmer and crooned Safe. No worries. Safe. Here. Mine.`

It's all subconscious at that, she knew, somehow, and it… stretched her credulity to its fullest.

Still, only one thought passed through her mind – `His hands aren't on the commlink! – Silly. Why does he choose to hold me instead? The commlink needs him.` – before the unnerved-sounding admiral on the other end spoke cautiously, "The Emperor wishes to speak with you presently, my lord. Shall I route the channel to your commlink, my lord?"

`The Emperor!` her mind shrieked, automatically apprehensive, then stuttered to a petrified halt for a moment. Raised in the environment that didn't see the Emperor – and his second-in-command – quite in a good light made her feel unnerved at the "Yes, Admiral" growled out by… Vader? Her father?

No no, you're safe, you're safe, the flames, remaining warm when in contact with her own presence, regardless of their far-colder brethren on the outside, crooned again. A promise, she knew, a subconscious promise, by her father.

Still, however warm and heartening the promise felt, she was gladder that for now she was concealed by three layers of protection when the Emperor's voice, scratchy and calmly menacing, at last sounded on the comlink. "Lord Vader, have you dealt with the Force user?"

"Yes, my master," the voice synthesiser replied in a matter-of-fact, clipped tone. The black flames, meanwhile, danced in two shades of glee: far darker on the outside, and far lighter on the inside.

With different causes, too.

"Who was it, my friend? And how did you deal with it? I find myself… interested." The Emperor's purring tone took a darker, more suspicious hint. "Was it one of your Jedi… friends?" Leia shivered, her hair on end.

Contempt flooded all the layers of flames cocooning her, cold and vicious. Leia shivered harder, though instinctively she knew that it wasn't directed towards her. "I have no Jedi friend, my master." It was pure Darth Vader speaking now, she knew, not her father, no.

Somehow, even in such a short time since they'd met, she longed for the latter.

And somehow, even though their meeting had been indirect and unwitting on the part of the Emperor, she hoped she would never see him personally in life, especially when the old man then countered with a slow, easy reply of: "Make sure of that, Lord Vader, and make sure also that such a powerful opponent is truly and properly dealt with. Otherwise, I will be… displeased."

Worse, Father – Vader! – replied with nearly a similar tone: "The Force user was untrained, despite his raw power. I bested him quite easily. He did not offer me any challenge whatsoever, my master."

She almost sought to break free from him, ran away and never looked back, there and then, despite all her current limitations. Almost, but then the Emperor terminated the conversation, and the air turned mercifully silent, less charged.

That was, until, with a sudden, far more savage yank by one tendral of icy flame, the comlink broke into pieces somewhere against the bulkhead opposite them.

If that were a person!

Her mind recoiled. But her body, trapped in his arms and a length of his cloak, could barely quiver with the urge.

Still, the black flames, with much of the negative emotions bled out via that one act of violence, crooned with relieved satisfaction, Safe, safe; mine, safe, concealed, safe, mine, no other's.

It just made it harder for her to break away, though not that Vader? Father? Let it happen in the first place. Even as he fluidly got up to his feet, she was still securely cocooned and nestled in his arms like an infant, with the almost-happy black flames – his flames? – doing both at once to her on the– less-visible level.

He took a step forward.

The door slid open at the same time, preceeded by an unsourced warning of impending violence from another familiar someone.

She truly thrashed about now, panicked. The distraction cost her captor – Father? Vader? – a split of second.

"Vader." Captain Antilles, angry and anxious, snarling at him. "Let her go!"

"NO!" she shrieked, automatically; maybe to deny the demand, maybe to prevent the black flames, blazing high and harsh with offence, from reaching out at the reckless man and treating him like the commlink from earlier, maybe both, but she didn't care. "No, don't!"

Something broke into pieces against the bulkhead, but thankfully not Captain Antilles. Leia subsided, shivering, feeling like crying again, just moments after her earlier bout had ended, or so it felt. Physical and mental exhaustion impinged on the edges of her mind, but she fought it with vicious determination. Winter and the captain were the only constants left from her old life now; she wasn't about to let any of them hurt – or die – and especially not by his hand.

"Captain Antilles," she addressed the man, with slightly-quavering voice, from her perch on the bulky mass of durasteel and leather and sleek heavy fabric. Calm, calm, she told herself. At least the furious, reckless, protective man, who must have checked the tiny speeder and noticed her missing, was still breathing, though apparently silenced by some means, and held in the lethal embrace of the flames that she had tasted earlier, before… before… before that.

Calm, calm, she tried to convince herself, even as she attempted to find a more comfortable seat in his arms, and meanwhile tried to ignore how she subconsciously snuggled against the side of the ever-blinking control panel on his chest. Calm, calm, and maybe both men wouldn't be killing each other in the next moment. "Captain Antilles, I'm sorry. I… I wanted to come here. I wanted to see… to… my mother…"

`She fell – He must've choked her! Like he did me just now…` a part of her mind shrieked, resounding with undeniable truth, as her train of thoughts – and thus her words – stuttered to a premature stop. Her perch flinched, black flames distracted from their captive and blazing now with old enduring agony and misery.

Agony and misery that she also shared, as her thoughts and emotions whirled in an endless loop of: `He lives,` and `He is my mother's husband,` and `He is my father,` and `He choked my mother,` and `He also choked me just now.`

What a family…

"Your… mother, Princess?"

Odd, that, similar to… Father? Vader?… Captain Antilles could utilise a lethal whisper that masks dread pretty well.

But what should he dread from an abcent – most likely dead – senator? And was it a ring of familiarity that she heard in his voice?

Slowly but surely, in her quest for understanding, Leia began to immerse herself deeper and deeper in her own past, ignoring the present. She went deeper, deeper, deeper…

To an inexplicable but poignant sense of loss that was barely sated – but at least quenched a little – when her tiny self lay in the arms that her primal sense of being termed as "quite familiar but not parent," to the hidden sense of melancholy that she got from him whenever she addressed the man as "Captain Antilles," to the baffling sliver of possessiveness whenever her father – no, her adoptive father – felt against the other man whenever one had to interact with the other with her in tow, to the short times stolen among his busy duties outside of the palace when her adoptive father wasn't around to teach her how to use a blaster, how to play bouncing ball with a club against the wall when there's nobody to play with her, how to steer a speeder…

"Uncle Ray," she'd called him, for some reason, in her earliest memory, though in the interfening time she had somehow stopped calling him that. When she'd grown older, she'd changed to "Cousin Ray," owing to her supposed relation to him on the Antilles side; and then their hectic lives had separated them, making him just "Captain Antilles" to her lately.

"Who are you?" she whispered, almost to herself, unknowingly cutting off the addressee's hostile remark at her father, a response to something that she hadn't paid attention to.

"What?" Captain Antilles stuttered to a stop.

She looked at him dead on, concentrating, feeling again the sense of almost-family that she'd felt during her earliest memory. "Who are you?" she repeated softly; wistful, bemused, curious.

She could tell that both men, postures stiff and somehow territorially possessive, were taken aback by the apparent non sequitur, but she didn't care. "Who are you to Padmé, my mother?"

The gobsmacked, wretched look on the usually-composed – genteel, even – man was quite telling.

"You… never told me," she breathed, as her world tilted out of orbit yet again, as she cowered deeper in her father's arms in a futile attempt to flee from the quiet something that whispered into her mind: `He knows your mother. He's been knowing your mother, and he never told you.`

Flames erupted from her own being, entangling with those of her father's, feeding and feeding off each other, whirling in a vicious circle of loss and pain and grief and anger and betrayal.

"Leia." – Uncle Ray? Cousin Ray? Captain Antilles? – 'Lay-yah', not 'Lay-yuh', not 'Lee-yah', not 'Lee-yuh', unlike how other people usually pronounced her name, she noticed only now, but why? – and why did he have to be so kriffing helpless and pained and wretched? He had no right to feel so!

A sob tore out of her chest, constricting her airway; and with that, the flames – her flames – collapsed back into herself, leaving her cold and hollow and miserable.

She buried her face against her father's helmet-covered neck, and with another wretched sob, her tears fell again.

End NOtes:
AU points:
In Rey-verse, Padmé's guards, especially her handmaidens and personal bodyguards, weren't just there for the duty; they're like family. And in Rey-verse too, Raymus Antilles wasn't raised on Alderaan. Long story short, he and Padmé met as kids and grew close.
In Rey-verse, there are also a few changes on the structure and history surrounding the seat of monarch on Alderaan, as stated in the story notes, among which are:
1. The dispute of ascendency is not on the level of Breha and Bail Organa, but one above them.
2. In Rey-verse, Bail Antilles is Breha's elder brother, not her father.
3. Following that point, Raymus Antilles is not Breha's younger brother, but still Bail's son, hence Breha's nephew, and Leia's supposed cousin – first cousin, to be exact.
4. The name "Organa," in Rey-verse, acts like the name "Winsor" for British ruling House.
5. Following the previous point, Bail Organa, with the argument that he is only the viceroy, not the king and hence not of the ruling House originally, is not an Organa before his marriage to Breha, but Alde, one of the founding Houses of Alderaan; this way, Bail's mother isn't the Queen, like in Wookieepedia.
Author's notes: I won't expand further here… Snippets in the story later on (or in other stories, maybe), but these changes are indeed part of my headcanon for Star Wars, so I will use them often.