They left for Naboo in the Hidden Star the next morning.
Leia was both surprised and unsurprised when she saw the group of people she'd be working with on Naboo. Jarrus, Bridger, and two dark-haired pilots, whose names she sifted from their minds to be Wedge Antilles and Biggs Darklighter.
She lightly touched the spot in her pocket, where the long-range comlink Ahsoka had given her to contact her with lay. She and Padmé, she grumbled to herself, were definitely up to something.
But they all filed onto the Star with minimal talking, Bridger drifting over to strike up a friendly exchange with the pilots. It was clear they all knew each other—as of a few months ago, after Skystrike, they were all members of the Lothal Rebel cell, and Leia found herself clutching the strings of her pack close to herself to ward against the feeling of. . . being alone.
It was a foreign and unpleasant feeling.
As most of the boys took their seats around the table in the main room, Leia hovered in the doorway and felt a hand land on her shoulder. She tensed.
"Relax," Jarrus said. The word was more soothing suggestion than order. She looked up at him, doing her best to look where she imagined his eyes were behind the mask, despite the fact he couldn't see the contact. She'd had practise, what with her father. "Have you had anymore sleep?"
She gritted her teeth. "No."
"Your brother?"
"Of course."
"If you like," he offered, "I have some things that are able to block the Force, or Force bonds. Temporarily. Ahsoka gave them to me for when avoiding Inquisitors, and I'm sure she has a larger collection of the artefacts. If you can use them while you sleep, they might be able to block the nightmares long enough for you to get rest."
"I. . ." She chewed on her lip.
She didn't want to admit that the nightmares. . . comforted her, in some perverse way, as much as they tormented her.
At least they told her that her brother was still alive.
"I'll keep it in mind," she promised. "For when we get back from Naboo."
If Jarrus could hear the half-lie in her voice, he didn't say anything. "I'm glad." he gave her shoulder a light push. "Now let's join the others."
Leia followed his lead, feeling—despite herself—like at least one burden had rolled off her shoulders.
"I assume we're the ones flying?" Darklighter said, gesturing to himself and Antilles. He glanced at Jarrus.
Jarrus crossed his arms. "If you like," he said, "it'd be best. Unless Leia wants to fly?" She started, shooting him a surprised glance. "It's her ship, after all."
"This is your ship?"
Leia glanced at Antilles and nodded.
He frowned, and glanced around the room. Everyone else was being. . . notably quiet. Even Darklighter.
"I don't think we've been introduced," he said. "I'm Wedge Antilles. You're Leia. . .?"
She smiled, at that. Only a little, but enough. "Leia Skywalker."
Darklighter stifled a laugh at the shock that roiled on Antilles's face.
"Skywalker? As in—"
"We're flying then?" Darklighter asked. Leia nodded, her smile vanishing. "Then let's go."
He took Antilles by the arm and made to steer him away, but Antilles resisted for barely long enough to pause and ask, "Any relation to a Luke Skywalker?"
Darklighter dragged him into the cockpit. Leia laughed. A bit. It wasn't happy, but it wasn't vindictive either.
"He's my brother," she called out after him, and laughed again at the flood of curse words.
Ahsoka and Padmé had definitely been up to something, she thought.
"So," after they jumped to hyperspace, Antilles plopped himself into a seat opposite her on the table and eyed the dejarik board projected over it. "May I ask you some questions about your brother?"
"Savrip to D9," Leia said, and smirked at Bridger's groan as his karkath was flattened. "Sure, but I get the feeling it's about Skystrike and, y'know, I wasn't there for that."
"You don't know much about it?"
"I know he grew to kind of like you, Antilles, and it triggered a crisis of faith." She narrowed her eyes as Bridger shifted his monnox and quickly moved her own out the way. "There were other factors, naturally, it was more of a right-place, right-time thing."
"So that was when he defected? What job did you two even do for the Empire, anyway?"
"He didn't defect until later." Her voice came out with more snap than she meant it to, but she didn't regret it. "As I said, there were other factors, it was a complicated decision, and it's a long story."
Antilles raised an eyebrow belligerently. "We've got time."
Darklighter, however, seemed ever-so-slightly more sensitive about the topic. "Where is he now?" he asked gently—though, as someone who'd put up with her on the flight to Dantooine from Coruscant, he certainly already knew.
Antilles, however, shut his mouth as it clicked.
"Captured and tortured." She tilted her head and pointedly didn't look at any of the boys—at the horrified, pitiful expressions she knew they were wearing. "Strider to A2," she said, smiling sweetly at the bout of cursing. "I win, Bridger."
Bridger whacked the holoprojector in a surprisingly juvenile motion for someone Leia's age and scowled. The projection flickered out. "Just call me Ezra."
She paused.
Frowned.
". . .okay," she said finally, though she didn't stop frowning.
"Yeah, just call us all by our first names," Antilles added, already switching on the projector again so that he could have a game. "Otherwise it gets all stiff and formal."
Stiff and formal. . .? "Alright," Leia said.
She didn't stop frowning until she laughed:
Biggs had taken all of Wedge's pieces in under five minutes.
They arrived on Naboo soon enough and Leia held her breath at the sight of Palpatine's idyllic homeworld spread out before her like a tapestry in blue and green. The last time she'd been here, Gerrera had tried to drench the place in blood.
"Naboo," Wedge murmured. Something like awe was in his voice.
"Now," Jarrus—Kanan—said. "You all know what we're here to do. Vader left the system only a few days ago, so we have to keep our heads down, or he'll be fully capable of rushing back to crush us. We just need to find Saw's Partisans, then we can open up the negotiations we came here to start. We're not here to cause trouble."
Ezra scoffed. "Why would Vader bother with us? We're tiny to him. Nothing."
Then he followed Kanan's gaze to Leia and said, "Oh."
"What?" Wedge asked, sharing a confused look with Biggs, but no one moved to answer them.
The comms crackled. "Trading ship Liberty's Death, this is Naboo air traffic control. Please state your passengers and business on Naboo."
"'Liberty's Death'?" Biggs echoed. "Some transponder code."
Leia shrugged. "We're on Naboo," she said, then leaned forward to peer out the window. "It seemed fitting."
Theed was as beautiful as Leia remembered. One would never think that a river of deadly molten plasma ran right under it.
She clutched her satchel against her chest and narrowed her eyes at the shops near the spaceport, wondering if she should buy a History Students of Theed rucksack again, to blend in. But she truthfully didn't need the extra space: all she had with her this time were a few changes of clothes, her lightsaber and a blaster Padmé had given her. The pack she'd been given would do.
They converged in a small café, dressed and chattering like tourists, drawing no more than the usual grimaces of artisans trying to soak in the creative atmosphere. Leia ordered a small fruitcake and a glass of water, then munched on it while Kanan spoke again.
"In order to see as much of the city as we can, we should split up," he said. He didn't say it carefully—saying things slowly, weighted with meaning, would be even more suspicious than saying it outright—but he said it intentionally, in a way that could be a message in itself, or could just be his normal speech pattern. "If we split up, in groups of two or so, then communicate via comlink?"
"There's five of us, Kanan," Ezra pointed out through a mouthful of crumbs. They sprayed out across the table and Leia grimaced. He swallowed hastily. "Then there'll be a three."
"Or I can go alone," Leia offered.
Kanan frowned. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I've been here before, you haven't; I'm the best choice to go on my own."
Wedge blinked. "You've been here before?" he asked, and Biggs elbowed him.
Kanan's frown only deepened, but he said, "Alright. We'll meet back at the ship in five hours, no matter what we all find, understand? But the moment we see something interesting, make sure you contact the others—we don't want anyone else to miss it."
"Agreed," Leia said, and the others echoed the sentiment.
Once they left the café, Kanan and Ezra headed south, towards the Palace and the waterfalls—and the caves therein. Biggs and Wedge, meanwhile, headed west to the industrial districts—where one might expect an industrial process to be carried out.
Leia followed neither of their examples.
She headed east—towards the clouds in the sky, hanging over the residential districts and the elegant townhouses situated there.
Padmé had mentioned offhand that her family's old house was there—that her family, Leia's grandparents, aunt and uncle, cousins, still lived there, when not at the family retreat of Varykino.
Leia wasn't drawn there because of family ties, it was something more connected to the Force and destiny than that, but. . .
One thing she did do was take the more. . . circuitous. . . route round to where the Force was egging her to go.
It took her past a townhouse no different from the others, but vastly different to Leia.
The street itself was as beautiful as them all, full of honey stone arches draped in climbing flowers—some lilac, some red, some pink. The paving slabs were pale blue, easy to walk on, and trees dotted every alcove, blossoming with all the colours that Coruscant didn't have.
Leia paused outside that house and breathed in deeply, the scent of a thousand flowers flooding her lungs. The air was cleaner here than it ever was on Coruscant, even though she was at the very heart of the capital city.
For a moment, she let herself wonder what it might have been like to grow up here, amongst the richness and the elegance and the comfort of a planet like this.
But that façade was deceptive, she knew.
Naboo may be idyllic on the surface, but beneath that it held so much more. Its fields and its harmless livestock rolled over a core of waterways holding increasingly vicious sea creatures. Its peaceful and pro-pacifist politics belied centuries of war and colonialism against the native Gungans. The beauty and extravagance of the wardrobe—especially the Queen's wardrobe—hid the blasters and listening devices and the wearer's deadly skill beneath the fabric.
The way Palpatine hid his brutality behind a grandfatherly veneer.
The way Padmé spoke of peace and waged war.
Leia rested a hand on the stone of the beautiful archways, so much stronger and tougher than its loveliness implied.
This planet had produced both of them. Polar opposites; each other's foil.
And they had both produced her.
Leia cast one more longing look at the townhouse she'd come here to see—built into the stone arches, with little in way of a front but steps that led up to the front door and potted plants adorning every metre—before she turned and continued on.
This planet was where the war had started, the moment Queen Amidala and Senator Palpatine were introduced.
And this planet was where the next step of it would unravel.
She didn't look back as she walked away, which was a shame. If she had, she might have noticed the shadow at the window of one of the neighbouring houses, watching her every move.
Vader's heart skipped a beat, the pacemakers protesting vehemently, when he read the report.
Barely a few days since he'd stationed the agent to watch Padmé's family and their home for contact with Leia or the Rebellion, and they were already seeing results.
And there were a mere few hours' hyperspace trip away.
"Captain Piett," he boomed, making the slight man start, though he did an admirable job of not showing it. The same could not be said for the rest of the bridge crew. "Set a course for Naboo. We will be return immediately for a short errand."
And it would be short. Already, his thoughts were starting to race—how he could secure Leia quickly, how he could convince her of his aims, how they could retrieve Luke and overthrow the Emperor together—and the metal of the datapad creaked under his grip.
Soon, he promised himself, and watched the stars stretch beyond the viewports.
It was a small park not far from the townhouse that the Force led her to, and she seated herself on a bench under a graceful domed gazebo next to a young brown-haired woman, watching the clear water trickle by in the stream. It was soothing, she registered—as far as she could register such things, anymore.
The Force was still nudging her, so she lifted her gaze from the water to scan the park. A young man with a viol stood in the bandstand a little way away, a young woman seated on the steps at his feet and singing along in a gentle, lilting voice. Gardens overflowed with plant species of all colours to the left; an interconnecting network of streams and waterbeds fanned out from a pond in the centre, with walkways and bridges of polished grey stone in and around lilypads and lilies; to the right, in the distance, trees cloaked a green field she could sense people running around in. Laughter carried on the wind.
She laughed herself in response. Something about the atmosphere in this place made her relax. She laughed again.
The woman next to her tensed.
She had, Leia observed without looking at her, been growing increasingly on edge since Leia had taken her seat beside her. When she finally let her gaze sweep back round again, to rest lazily on her face, her brain ticked over it.
She'd seen that face before.
A fairly attractive face, earnest unlike the way Luke was earnest, but in the way Leia knew she would tell her exactly what she thought, regardless of reprisal. She let her eyebrows crease slightly and felt a stab of recognition from the woman.
So. She'd seen Leia somewhere. Where had Leia seen her?
Instead of outright asking, Leia slipped off her bag and slipped off the bench, to crouch by the edge of the gazebo and trail her hand in the water. She sat side-on to the woman, legs half-bent out in front of her, leaning against one of the pillars.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" she commented.
The woman turned her—surprisingly hard, especially against the softness of Naboo's façade—gaze on Leia and only nodded.
Leia kept trailing her hand in the stream. It was warm, she noted—warmer than the mild but pleasant weather would cause. She wondered if it was the plasma running close to the surface that did it.
She began to trace circles in the water, watching the ripples fan out, then she brushed her fingers along the ivory petals of one of the waterlilies. It was clammy to the touch.
"Beautiful flowers, especially," she continued, "and I like waterlilies, but I thought I even saw some starflowers scattered about over there."
She lifted her gaze again to meet the woman's, calm and steady and intent. "Hidden."
The woman blinked as the pieces fell into place.
Her holo came back to mind, studied back when Leia was on Coruscant and still buzzing with guilt at the fact she'd helped the Rebel spies escape to her brother's detriment—as did the curses the ISB agent presenting it had unleashed when he'd realised exactly who it was they'd had right under their noses.
"I'm Leia Skywalker," she offered. She thought she saw the woman mouth demon and her eyes slid to her bag. The glint of a lightsaber hilt was barely visible.
"I'm Liana Hallik," she offered in response, and Leia smiled.
"I know."
Jyn Erso was even tenser now, looking just about ready to bolt, eyeing Leia's seated position for strategic advantages in a fight—but of course there were none. That was the point.
And it wasn't like Leia needed them, anyway.
It would look suspicious to bolt, and the last thing Erso or Gerrera needed was a chase through the streets drawing attention to their activities. So she stayed put.
Leia said, "Thank you for returning my ship after making your escape. I liked it a lot—we came here in it today, in fact."
Erso hissed out a breath. "What do you want?" she snapped.
"Amidala wants to re-establish contact with Gerrera," Leia said baldly. There was no one within listening distance, and she'd surreptitiously crushed the only bug in the vicinity.
"And she sent you? You're a long way from Coruscant, demon."
"If I go back to Coruscant, I get thrown into a cell beside my brother's and tortured right along with him," she said. She didn't mean it to come out quite so fiercely, but it did. "I can't imagine why Amidala sent me with the delegation, other than that she knows I'm highly motivated to gain resources and allies to help me mount a rescue attempt to retrieve him."
"You're going to rescue him?" Erso's eyebrows were high.
"I am."
She half laughed, half scoffed. "And how do you propose to do that?"
"With a lot of destruction and Imperial casualties," she smiled sweetly, "naturally."
"Naturally."
"And you want Saw's help to do that?" Her tone, in that perfect Coruscanti accent, couldn't have sounded more. . . amused. Sceptical.
It was promising.
Leia shrugged, dipping her fingers back into the stream. "I've heard that he's a fan of destruction and Imperial casualties," she said. She flicked the water at her, pointedly. "With the firepower to back it up."
Erso's eyes tracked the splashes on the floor. "You're Vader's daughter."
She swallowed every curse and epithet she wanted to voice in response to that, but just said, "Yes."
"You have his Jedi powers?"
Again, "Yes."
"You know how to wage a war? Both you and your brother?"
"We crushed your uprising at Kuat."
Erso blinked. "What?"
"That was us. We conducted the operation. We brought order. And we know exactly how to undo it. They taught us," she smiled, entirely unconcerned with how easily this sort of bloodlust came to her, "and now we'll turn it on them."
Erso was quiet for a moment, eyes narrowed. "Amidala accepted Vader's children into her Rebellion."
"She did."
She stood. "I'll tell Saw what you said today. If he wants to speak to you, or Amidala, he'll contact you. I won't promise anything."
Leia got to her feet as well. "I'm not expecting promises.
"Now I'll get out of here," she said, "before whatever contact you're waiting for shows up."
Erso narrowed her eyes again. Opened her mouth—
And Leia gasped as cold flooded her, choked her, crushed her.
Erso frowned. "Skywalker—?"
Leia. The voice was thunder against her mind.
"Vader's in the system," she got out. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates.
Erso scoffed. "He was here a few days ago. We weathered him then, we'll weather him again.
"He won't be looking for you." Leia grabbed her satchel, slung it over her shoulder. "He's after me. I—my friends—we have to go."
She paused to say, "Thank you."
Then she fled.
Her comlink was buzzing the whole run back. Everyone else was waiting when she finally rocketed up the Star's ramp and burst into the cockpit, clinging to the back of the seat Ezra had taken behind the two pilots.
"It's about time you got here," Wedge snapped, "Vader's imposed a cordon around the planet!"
"This isn't the first cordon, nor will it be the last, that this ship has flown through," she snarled right back. "Unless it's your own piloting skills you're worried about?"
"I went to Skystrike."
"And my father is the best starpilot in the galaxy! If he's out here. . ."
There was a moment of stunned silence.
Before either of them could ask her to explain, she heard—
Leia.
She let go of Ezra's seat to grab at her head just as the ship lurched off the ground; she staggered back, then forward again.
Leia, my daughter, let me in.
"Trading ship, Liberty's Death, this is Naboo air traffic control. You have not been cleared for exit. There is now an Imperial cordon in place and any ship attempting to break it is required to present itself for inspection—"
"Shut that thing up!" Kanan ordered.
"—trading ship, Liberty's Death, do you—"
Biggs whacked the switch.
The silence only made it worse when the Executor finally appeared beyond the viewport.
She was, Leia thought as a pit opened in her stomach, massive.
"Look at the size of that thing!"
The string of swearing was cut off by the comm chiming again.
"She's hailing us?"
Leia ignored them, heart hammering in her throat. Her gaze was fixed on the bridge of that monstrous ship, the figure no doubt standing there like an avenging god, as he beat at her shields with a force that resonated throughout her entire consciousness.
Leia, stop running and we can make this right.
Don't acknowledge him, don't acknowledge him, don't acknowledge him—
"Trading ship, this is Executor. You will be tractored aboard momentarily on suspicion of Rebel ties and must submit your cargo and crew for inspection." The voice was whiny, obnoxious—what had the admiral of Death Squadron been called again, the one her father hated? Oscar?
"Move aside, Admiral," came a dark voice.
Leia felt the floor vanish beneath her feet.
"Turn it off," she murmured, "turn it off—"
"Leia," her father said. "Surrender, and I may allow your friends to live."
A contingent of TIEs shot towards them; they banked hard to the right, desperately straining for that opening just out there beyond the viewport, beyond the Executor, among the stars—
"Surrender, Leia. It is the only way."
"Turn it off. . ." But they were too distracted, too focused on dodging and shooting back and casting desperate glances at the navicomputer as it made its calculations—
"Surrender, Leia, and together we will be able to save Luke—"
"Don't you dare talk about him!"
Silence. In the cockpit, and over the comms.
"Surrender, you say? So what? So you can hang me over a chasm and cut off my hand as well? Throw me to Palpatine to have his way with as well?"
"He—"
"Is in agony," she spat. "I can sense it. Don't you dare tell me you can't too."
No reply.
"And don't you dare, Father," she ignored the yelps of shock from the front of the cockpit, "ever come near me again."
She strode forwards to mash the disconnect button. She revelled in the painful thump of hand against metal.
The navicomputer had finished.
"Punch it," she ordered. They did.
Executor vanished.
Vader watched Leia disappear into the Force and did not notice the slowly growing circle of corpses around him.
Things were worse than he thought, he observed idly. If there was pain in his chest, he ignored it; it was just the suit malfunctioning, surely.
But things were much worse than he thought.
Leia was proving much more stubborn than expected. Much more vocal—everyone on the bridge had heard that rant, that promise, and that did not befit the future Vader wanted.
He would need to try a different tact.
He himself had never been one for subtlety. Never been one to run and hide like a coward.
But, as much as he balked at the idea. . . he knew one person, at least, who was.
"So. . ." Wedge said, leaning back in his chair, eyeing the door Leia had just stormed out of.
"I don't think we should ask," Biggs said.
"Yeah." Wedge turned back to the controls. "Maybe not."
Leia was having déjà vu, sitting here. In her room on her ship. Screaming and sobbing into her pillow again, on the way to the Rebel base.
It was then that the comlink started to buzz.
Leia ignored it at first, hoping it would just. . . vanish, and she wouldn't have to deal with it. It didn't.
It kept buzzing. Every buzz sounded more insistent than the last.
Finally she caved, rolled over and—realising it was in her bag, on the other side of the room—levitated it towards her. It landed in her hand; she shoved the button and ground out, "What."
The small figure projected crossed her arms and frowned at her. "Kanan said you had a run-in with your father."
"It was barely a run-in," she snapped. "He tried to catch us, we flew away. End of story."
"You seem awfully shaken by it."
"I'm fine," she enunciated, the words bitter on her tongue. "I'm a big girl, I can do things without my father—or my mother," she said pointedly,"—holding my hand."
Ahsoka sighed. "Leia, I know this is hard for you—"
"Hard? I can't sleep without being reminded of what he's doing to my brother, of what he's letting him do to my brother, and no one's twitched a finger to change it! I'm starting to think—"
"If you go in alone, you will be captured to. And then where will we be?"
Leia grunted. "I can't just do nothing." Then she added acerbically, "I'm not like my mother."
"She is not doing nothing."
Leia folded her arms across her chest, and ignored the part of her brain that told her that was an idiosyncrasy she shared with her father. "Then what is she doing?"
Ahsoka was silent for a moment. Hesitant—
Leia scoffed and reached to disconnect the call—
"She has an agent on the inside."
Leia froze.
Ahsoka must have taken it as encouragement, because she continued, "How do you think Visz got in? How do you think Erso and Andor got in? We have one more spy inside the Imperial Palace, and Padmé has been frantically trying to get in touch with them for over a week to try to see if they're in any position to get Luke out."
Leia didn't know what to say. Except. . .
"Why didn't she tell me?"
Ahsoka sighed. "I think Padmé's so used to playing her cards close to her chest," she admitted, "and holding even me and Sabé at arm's length by now, that she felt that it would be her fault if she told you, you got your hopes up, and had them crushed again."
Leia. . . could relate to that.
"She feels responsible for everything—it was nearly impossible to convince her to send you, of all people, on this mission—and she didn't want to be responsible for this as well."
She shrugged. "But that's just my take on it."
Leia. . . decided she could unpack all of that later.
"There's a spy on the inside trying to get my brother out?" she asked instead. Hope, alien and sweet, swelled in her chest.
Ahsoka smiled.
"Yes," she said. "There is."