Chapter Thirty-Two

3 ABY

~ Luke Skywalker ~
"You want to do what?" Leia all but shouted.

All circumstances considered, it wasn't exactly an overreaction. My bottom jaw was somewhere in the bottom plating of the Falcon. Chewie looked like someone had just told him that the Emperor had resigned and was letting him take his place. Even Ben, who was usually so close and attuned to Kya, seemed taken aback, eyes wide in a rare slip of his self-control.

Kya seemed unruffled. "I want to bring Vader to Polis Massa because they have were among the team that reassembled Vader in his suit twenty years ago, and they are the ones who can give him back his normal body."

"But why?" Leia persisted. "He is a monster, Kya – you know of the damage and the tyranny he is capable of."

"A monster?" Kya shook her head, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Perhaps. But evil does not always come from evil, Leia. Oftentimes, it comes from good."

I snorted. Vader had ordered the destruction of Alderaan and the targeting of Yavin IV and Hoth. He had imprisoned Han in carbonite and given him to Jabba. He had tortured Leia and Kya without any sign of remorse. And then he had tried to slice my hand off and choke Ben during our duel. If there was good, I would be hard-pressed to see it.

"And where might this 'good' be?" I asked. "I see no evidence. He tortured us, Kya."

Kya opened her mouth – but Ben beat her to it.

"Kya," he said softly, "maybe he was good once. But it has been twenty years . . . twenty years for him to linger on the price he paid during his Trial of Sacrifice. He blames the Jedi for that – you know that. It will not be easy to convince him otherwise."

"Maybe?" Leia echoed incredulously, her gaze switching to Ben. "I doubt he was ever good. How can a monster like him have ever been good?"

Kya sighed and lowered herself into a seat. "He was good once," she remarked. "A skilled man, a loyal man, a good man. We all trusted him, and loved him, and counted him among our allies. But . . . But sometimes that is not enough."

"What do you mean?" I asked curiously. "Did you . . . Did you know Vader . . . before?"

Just then, Old Obi-Wan's words rang through my mind, faint but clear: A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine until he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights. He betrayed and murdered your father. Now the Jedi are all but extinct. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force.

Back then, I hadn't understood the gravity of his words. Now I did.

"So Vader was a Jedi," I said slowly, answering my own question, "once, a long time ago." I looked up. "Did you know him then?"

A smile of equal regret and fondness arose on Kya's face. It made her seem old and weary, which was a considerable feat. She must have been in her late thirties or forties if she had been alive and old enough to serve among the Jedi and the clones during the Clone Wars, but to my eyes she had always looked young, as though she was frozen at age twenty or so, and could not appear older. That is, unless one looked at the depth of her sapphire eyes, and saw the wisdom and pain that only experience of many years could bring.

"Yes," she murmured. "I knew him once, before he fell. In fact, I served alongside him. My Master often entrusted me into his care if he could not see to me personally."

"What was he like?"

"Bold. Impulsive. Rash." She looked at me. "Much like you, truth be told."

"Did he . . . I mean . . . Were he and my father friends?" I asked tentatively. If my father had been as skilled as Old Obi-Wan had told me, surely he could have held his own against Vader – unless something had stayed his hand and blinded his eyes . . . something like friendship.

"No. They were rivals."

I blinked. Really? I tried to imagine the scene – my father, bold and strong and noble, against Vader, dark and menacing and evil. It wasn't easy. How would my father have lost?

"Because he cared too much," Kya said suddenly, the glint in her eyes telling me that she had picked up on my thought and was answering it. "He cared too much for those he loved and was therefore manipulated into following a path he regrets even now, even though he refuses to admit it to anyone."

I stared at her. "Darth Vader" and "caring" were concepts so far apart I couldn't even begin to imagine them together, much less the Sith Lord actually loving someone and someone loving him back.

Leia seemed to have similar problems. "Darth Vader? Actually loving someone?" she repeated with a skeptical snort. "I find that impossible."

Ben didn't say anything, but when I glanced at him, his eyes were narrowed and his whole body tense, as though ready to leap up at the slightest provocation. Kya and him seemed to be locked in a staring contest of some sort, blue-green challenging sapphire, both demanding something of the other. But as I watched, Ben sighed, nodded, and leaned backwards, as though satisfied with whatever answer their telepathic bond had provided, while she shifted her gaze away, as though embarrassed at having lost the battle.

"Of course," he murmured quietly. "But are they ready?"

"I cannot answer their questions any other way," she replied just as softly. "And if they are not ready now, they never will be. We cannot wait much longer – either we reveal it, or they find out the hard way."

"Very well," he said grudgingly.

Leia's patience ended right about there.

"Can you at least acknowledge that we are here, and exist, and can actually speak for ourselves?" she snapped challengingly, her brown eyes flashing between both Jedi.

Kya raised an eyebrow. "Are you certain you wish to know?" she asked, a trace of gentle rebuke in her tone instead of the condescension I had thought she would respond with. "Sometimes there are things you are not ready to know, and you have to place your trust in those older than you to determine when you are ready."

"You're not much older than me, and if you dare to talk about it in front of us," Leia pointed out, "you mean to tell us eventually. So tell us."

For a long moment, there was silence.

Then Ben leaned back against the wall. "Impressive," he commented, crossing his arms. "They do have a point, Kya."

"And how much are you willing to reveal?" she shot back.

He shrugged, a simple lift and drop of his shoulders that expressed how much interest he really had. They did not mean to offend or exclude us, I realized; they just were not quite sure how to go about telling us . . . whatever they were about to tell us. We were not the easiest audience, with Leia itching to go after Han and I itching to get back to Dagobah and the both of us torn between that and our desire to find out exactly why Kya was insisting on transporting Vader back to Polis Massa to have his body restored and the suit removed.

"It is your choice, Walker," he said, an odd, formal tone entering his voice at the last word that told me it was a title, not just a noun.

Kya scowled. "That's not helpful at all."

"Why don't you start from the beginning?" I interrupted. "The real beginning – how you know my father, how you two met, and why we are bringing the Alliance's worst enemy to be healed."

Kya and Ben shared a single glance.

"Very well," she conceded. "I suppose it is only fair. . ."

~ Ben Kenobi ~
Kya was brief when describing our meeting on Naboo, careful not to speak about the whole muddle of alternate universes and Walkers and soulmates. She made it appear as though we had met simply by chance and had continued our friendship from there. It wasn't quite the whole truth the two wanted, but for now I knew it was the most truth Kya was comfortable revealing.

She spent more time, however, detailing the Clone Wars, and the prowess of Anakin and the aid Bail Organa had rendered. I jumped in from time to time, but for the most part I was content in allowing her to take center stage.

Then we finally hit the touchy topic – Luke and Leia's connection to Vader.

"Tell me, Leia," Kya inquired, "what do you remember about your parents? Your real parents, not Senator Organa and Queen Breha."

Leia did not answer immediately. Something warred across her face, matching the emotional battle that I could feel even where I sat about five feet away from her. Someone – perhaps a Jedi in hiding or perhaps simply her instructors in diplomacy – had trained her to control her facial expression and protect herself from mind manipulation through the Force, things would assist her as a politician as well as protect her from the Empire, but her training was limited even when compared to Luke, and she could not conceal everything from us.

Hmm. She will need some training as well, if she is to help us when we face the Emperor, I noted.

Yes. But not yet.

I blinked. She – She doesn't know?

Bail thought it best for her to be ignorant; that would make it harder for anyone else, especially servants of the Emperor, to pick up on her Force-ability.

Kya had a fair point, I had to admit. Her ignorance would shield her from the Empire, and if anyone found out, Senator Organa and her could claim rightful innocence that would protect them from prosecution.

But still . . . The longer one waited to begin training, the harder it was to actually train. And Leia, although stronger than the average Jedi, was nowhere near as strong as Luke, and Luke already still struggled to keep up with his training. Leia's training would be even more arduous, I sensed, and would most likely come into conflict with everything else she had learned as a politician.

"Not much. I remember . . ." She closed her eyes, and the Force rippled gently. "I remember a woman, I think. She was very beautiful. And kind. But . . . also very sad. That's it."

Kya looked away, and I saw the flash of grief on her face. Then she said, her voice lower than normal, "Yes, she was sad. But she loved you enough to survive long enough to name you and see you before she died."

Leia looked at her sharply. "You knew her?"

"I was with her when she died."

Leia blinked, and the Force swelled with confusion. It was obvious that she did not understand. But she was too stunned to speak.

Kya turned to Luke. "And you, Luke, what do you know of your parents?"

He shrugged. "Not much," he admitted, scratching his head as though wishing more memories would pop in. "Old Obi-Wan told me that he was a great fighter and a great pilot during the Clone Wars, but that's about all I know."

I snorted. "Great trouble-maker, more like," I remarked scathingly.

Ben. . . Kya said.

What? I am not lying. I can count on one hand the number of times Anakin did not cause us grief in one way or another.

"Very well. I suppose I can't expect much more. But at least I have a foundation to begin with." Kya straightened. "Luke, your father was a Jedi Knight called Anakin Skywalker, a very famous warrior in the Clone Wars. And Leia, your mother was Senator Padmé Naberrie Amidala of Naboo – I know you have heard of her," she added, seeing how Leia's eyes widened as she gasped.

"Then . . . Then who was my father?" Leia asked eagerly.

"And who was my mother?" Luke echoed.

Kya looked between the two of them, and for the first time in the entire discussion amusement flitted across her face.

"Can you not guess?"

They both shook their heads.

"Then let me explain one more crucial piece of information: Senator Amidala and Jedi Skywalker were married a few days after the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and not too long before her death, she informed her husband that she was pregnant with twins, a girl and a boy. That was twenty-one years ago."

It took about three seconds before everything clicked. I knew at once, because Luke's jaw hit the floor again with enough force to make a dent while Leia's face turned so pale I could literally see the blood draining away.

So . . . now they know. I sighed. Here comes the storm. . . Bye-bye, peace and quiet.