Chapter 23 – Obstinate
Three days later
"Good. That's very good."
Leia was on her knees in the center of her office in the Senate. Her eyes were shut tight and her brow was drenched with sweat as she extended her hand in front of her. Arm trembling with exertion, she focused her energies on the task ahead.
"Feel the Force flowing through you. Let it fill you up. Allow it to empower you."
Leia smiled triumphantly in spite of her exhaustion. She felt an incredible thrill whenever she tapped into the Force. It made her feel invincible. It made her feel alive! The power at her fingertips was intoxicating.
"Now I want you to set it down. Nice and easy."
Unable to maintain focus, Leia dropped her arm and the helmet she had been suspending went plummeting to the ground. It landed with a thud and rolled away toward Vader's feet.
"Did you see that?" Leia asked, eyes shining as she looked up at her father. "I did it! It was floating! That was incredible!"
Vader didn't seem to share her enthusiasm. Leaning down, he scooped up his helmet off the ground.
Utterly oblivious to Vader's discontentment, Leia continued to prattle on as she got to her feet. "I could never move things with the Force like that. I mean, I could get them to jiggle a bit, but that's really it. Ahsoka tried to teach me, but I never really got it. But now –"
"You failed," Vader interrupted bluntly.
Nonplussed, Leia blinked a few times before stammering: "What do you mean?"
"You seek power, but you must also exercise restraint," Vader lectured. His brow was furrowed and he was glaring down at her with a most displeased expression. He seemed to be upset with her.
"I don't understand. What did I do wrong?"
"You will not repeat my mistakes," Vader said without answering her. "I will not let you."
"What mistakes?"
Vader took a breath to recompose himself. "Forgive me," he said. "That was unwarranted." Leia tilted her head in confusion. She still had no idea what she had done wrong. "I have high expectations for you, that's all," Vader said as he took a step toward her. Without hesitating, he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Next time, I will be more specific in my instruction."
"…Okay."
"You have great power, Leia," Vader said. "You must learn how to control it before you can learn how to maximize it." With that, he released her and took a step away. "Do you understand?"
"I… guess," Leia said unconvincingly.
Vader smiled thinly. "I didn't understand either when I was your age," he told her. "But you are much smarter than I was then."
"You don't give yourself enough credit," she said. Her tone was light, but her message was less so. She was frustrated by her father's incessant self-deprecation. He was constantly denigrating himself, especially in relation to her. Time and time again he would tell her that she was so much better than him. For any adjective in the book, she was always the superlative in comparison to him. But it wasn't true! From everything she knew about him, her father was a wonderful man. Why Luke and Padmé couldn't see that was beyond her.
"It's almost time to go," Vader said. As always, he had brushed aside her compliment. He was obstinate in his refusal to admit any merits that he may have.
"Is it really?" Leia asked, stowing away her disappointment as she glanced at the control panel by the door. The clock read five to one. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Were we really training for that long? Why didn't you stop me?"
"You seemed to be enjoying yourself," Vader commented dryly.
"But I'm a mess!" Leia exclaimed. Frazzled, she wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand and attempted to fix up her messy hair.
"Take all the time you need," Vader said before placing his helmet over his head. "The meeting doesn't begin until we arrive."
"I don't want to keep them waiting!" Leia said as she rushed over toward her desk. Taking a seat, she reached into a drawer and pulled out a holopad. "It would be terribly rude of us to be late," she said as she looked at her reflection in the screen.
Vader snorted in amusement. "Gentility has never been my forte, nor my priority," he said, voice now deep on account to the mask. Leia glanced up at him and suppressed a laugh at this grandiloquent statement. "I will be waiting in the hall," Vader told her. His cape billowed behind him as he spun around and left through the front door.
Returning her attention to her reflection, Leia did the best she could to fix up her fraying hairdo. Padmé had done it up for her that morning. Three plaits of hair converged into a bun behind her neck and a single intricate braid cascaded all the way down to her lower back. It was truly beautiful work, and Leia could appreciate the artistry and care which went behind it. Combining that with the elegant white dress she had picked out for her, and Leia had never felt so pampered.
Leia didn't know what to think about Padmé anymore. One thing she was sure of was that she abhorred her treatment of Vader. She spoke to him as if he was a monster, yet Leia knew him to be anything but. Despite that, she had come to realize that Padmé was far more complicated that she originally appreciated. Vitriol toward Vader notwithstanding, Leia could admit that Padmé was an endearing woman once she got to know her. Whenever she was alone with her and Luke, she epitomized all things maternal. She cared for them both deeply. Leia couldn't deny that fact. Nor could she deny that she enjoyed the attention Padmé gave her. There was something special about spending time with her and her alone. For three years, Leia had been practically starved of any female interaction in the male-dominated Rebellion, and she hadn't realized how much she had missed it until now.
How could she reconcile the irreconcilable facets of Padmé's identity? She was at once both her mother and her enemy. As Padmé, she was a desperately needed friend whom Leia could idolize and adore. Yet as Fett, she sought to tarnish Leia's relationship with Vader. Leia hated Fett. She wished that persona hadn't ever come to be. She wished her mother could be just that: her mother. And yet she was not. Instead, she was split to the core.
Realizing that she had drifted off in thought, Leia shook her head and returned back to the present. Determining that her appearance was satisfactory, she set the holopad down and stood up. She straightened out her dress and made her way to the door. Arriving in the hallway, she saw Vader waiting patiently against the wall with his hands clasped in front of him.
"How do I look?" she asked him.
Vader hesitated, and Leia realized that the question might have made him uncomfortable. She hadn't even thought about it. It was a testament to how comfortable she had become with him to not even think twice about asking something like that.
He quickly recovered, however. Despite his mask, Leia could hear the smile in his voice when he spoke. "Like your mother," he said.
Leia was lost for words. Never before had such a simple compliment resonated so profoundly with her. She gave her father a radiant smile before glancing down and giving her dress another unnecessary pat down.
"You're nervous," Vader noted.
"A bit," she confessed.
"Don't be," Vader instructed. "Anxiety serves no functional purpose. It is a weakness you must do without."
"You say that like it's so easy."
Vader looked away. "You will learn," he said. "Once you understand that you are powerful, you will cease to be afflicted with such debilitating emotions." Leia frowned at this. Before she could ask him to elaborate, Vader beckoned for her to follow him and took off down the hall.
Leia hurried after him. "I don't understand," she said, struggling to keep up with his long strides. "What do you mean by that?"
"As a Rebel, you lived in fear," Vader told her when they took a turn down another corridor. "Now you do not. This is the first step."
"The first step toward what?"
"Toward confidence."
"I am confident," Leia insisted.
Vader shook his head. "Not yet, you're not," he said. "When you reach the end of your training, you will understand what true confidence is."
"It sounds like you're speaking from experience," Leia deduced.
"I used to be just like you," Vader said. "When I was a Jedi, I doubted my every move. Nobody in the Order ever believed in me. They didn't trust me, and because of that I didn't trust myself."
Leia could relate to this. The last people to truly believe in her capabilities had been the Organas. They had trusted her unequivocally. Everyone else either treated her like a little bird who needed to be protected or simply dismissed her as being too young and inexperienced to be trusted with anything. Ahsoka and Han were the primary culprits of this condescension in her mind.
But Vader wasn't like that. He believed in her just like Bail and Breha did. He trusted her to help with the negotiations with the Alliance and he placed faith in her abilities as a Jedi. Perhaps that was why she was flourishing under Vader's teaching whereas she had floundered under Ahsoka's. Her father believed in her whereas Ahsoka had done nothing but doubt her.
She and Vader walked in silence for the remainder of their short trip. Arriving at the conference room from three days prior, they performed the same ritual before entering.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
Entering the room, Leia was surprised to see a far more sizable delegation awaiting them than last time. Seated on either side of Mothma and Ackbar along the south end of the table were a half dozen or so Rebel generals and admirals. Conspicuously absent from the proceedings was the Vice Chair Mas Amedda. At once, Vader honed in on this as he walked over toward Amedda's empty chair.
"Where is the Vice Chair?" he asked the room.
"We figured he would be arriving with you, Lord Vader," Mothma said.
Vader grasped the back of Amedda's chair firmly. "I see," he growled.
Alarmed by Vader's reaction, Leia quickly stepped forward. "Perhaps the Vice Chair is merely running late," she said, although she knew this couldn't possibly be the case. No way Amedda would have been this late to a meeting of this significance.
Vader didn't respond to this. Instead, he pulled out the empty chair and gestured for Leia to take a seat. "In either case, we will start without him," he said. Leia met his gaze before sitting down at the head of the table. She could tell what Vader was thinking: Amedda must have been so disenchanted with the proposition Leia had presented to Mothma last time that he had decided to take matters into his own hands. What he planned to do, however, remained a mystery.
"I see you have invited your military brass to accompany us," Vader said once Leia had pushed her seat in. He took a step out from behind her chair and began slowly walking down the left end of the table. "I can only assume this means you intend to cooperate."
"That remains to be seen," Mothma said.
"Is that so?" Vader asked. "Tell me senator, what else must we do to convince you of our sincerity?"
Mothma paused to glance at Leia. "We have some demands," she said, returning her attention to Vader.
"Demands?" Vader repeated. He seemed to be irked by the use of the term.
"I might remind you that you have very little leverage in these negotiations," Mothma told him. "You are asking a favor of us, and therefore we have every right to request concessions on your end."
Vader came to a stop behind the chair of General Rieekan. He kept his eyes on Mothma as he placed his hands on the back of the general's chair. "Leverage," he repeated, enunciating the word slowly. A tense silence ensued as he loomed over the terrified general. "Leverage is subjective, senator," he said finally. Vader then reached to his belt and swiftly drew his lightsaber. Startled, Leia leapt to her feet.
"Put that away!" she demanded.
Vader swiveled his head to look at her. "Pardon?"
"You heard me. Put it away."
Vader seemed to be nonplussed by this demand. Lost for words, he merely stared back at her.
"I will not condone physical threats at these negotiations," Leia told her father. "So put it away. Now."
Vader hesitated for a moment longer before complying. He took a step away from Rieekan's chair and reattached the lightsaber to his belt. "Very well," he said.
Leia exhaled and returned to her seat. She pressed her sweaty palms against the table and turned to Mothma. "What are your demands, senator?" she asked.
Mothma seemed to be just as caught off guard as Vader had been at her interjection. She cleared her throat and shared a glance with Ackbar before finding her voice. "I… well, we – the Alliance leadership, that is – have come to the conclusion that cooperation with Darth Vader would be impossible."
Leia held up a hand to stop Vader from responding to this statement. "Why might that be?" she asked.
"The leadership may understand the rationale behind this, but the individual soldier would not," Mothma explained. "The army would lose all faith in its leadership if it looked like we were following Darth Vader's orders."
Leia frowned as she considered this. It was a valid point. Vader was considered to be the primary enemy of the Rebellion, more so even than Palpatine had been.
"What is your alternative, senator?" Vader asked as he began walking back toward the opposite end of the table.
Mothma reached under the table and produced a holoprojector. "This," she said before sliding it across the table. When it came to a stop, the device activated itself and a life-sized blue projection emerged. Leia gasped when she saw who it was standing above her.
"Hello, Anakin," said Ahsoka Tano. "It's been a long time."
Vader came to a stop behind Leia's chair and stared up at the recording. She could tell at once that he was furious that Ahsoka would so casually use that name.
"Senator Mothma informed me about the proposition you and Leia presented to her. I am encouraged to hear that you are willing to make concessions. As you might suspect, however, the Rebel leadership has expressed concerns with cooperating with you. I took it upon myself to present a counter-offer which I hope you will be willing to consider."
Ahsoka paused and Leia waited with bated breath for her to continue. Vader, meanwhile, had clenched his fists and was seething up at Ahsoka's projection.
"The galaxy knows you as Darth Vader, but it doesn't have to. If you take off that mask and go by your true name, everything can be resolved. Anakin Skywalker can lead the forces of the Alliance. Darth Vader cannot."
Ahsoka continued talking, but Vader refused to listen. "Turn this off," he demanded, pointing a finger at Mothma. When she didn't react, Vader lost his cool. "Now!" he bellowed.
Startled, Mothma gestured to the general nearest to the holoprojector. The man reached out and deactivated it hastily.
"What is this?" Vader asked, voice trembling with anger. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"A joke? Lord Vader, no –"
"I will not tolerate these spurious accusations," Vader interrupted. "Tano is a renowned liar. I cannot believe you would take the word of this terrorist and murderer."
"Terrorist and murderer?" Mothma repeated.
"Don't pretend like you don't remember. She was expelled from the Order!"
Mothma arched an eyebrow. "I seem to recall that she was exonerated," she pointed out.
Vader swiped a hand angrily. "That is irrelevant!"
Leia spun in her chair and placed a hand on Vader's arm. "Calm down," she beseeched.
"Don't tell me to calm down!" Vader snapped as he pulled away from her. "This treatment is entirely unwarranted!"
Mothma stood up quickly. "Lord Vader, I do apologize if I offended you, but I don't understand what we did wrong."
"You don't understand? You don't, do you? Don't insult me!"
"Father, please," Leia whispered.
"I don't have to stand for this," Vader said, shaking his head. Giving Mothma one last murderous look, he spun around and marched out of the room.
Leia leapt to her feet. "Come back!" she called after him. Turning back to the Alliance delegation, she held up her hands apologetically. "Don't leave, I can fix this," she said in a high voice. With that, she hurried out of the conference room and after her furious father.
"Father!" she cried, no longer bothering to keep her voice down now that the door was closed. "Come back!"
Vader didn't slow down. His cape was swishing behind him as he marched down the hallway toward the elevator. Hiking up her dress, Leia ran in pursuit and managed to catch up with him when he pressed the button.
"Stop!" she pleaded. Grabbing onto his arm, she forced Vader to turn around to look at her. "What are you doing?" she hissed.
"I have never been so disrespected," Vader growled.
"Ahsoka wasn't disrespecting you! She just wants you to go by your true name, that's all!"
"Vader is my true name!"
Startled, Leia released his arm and took a half step back.
"I don't know what sort of things Tano told you about me, but she lied," Vader rumbled as he pointed a finger at her. "Anakin Skywalker was weak! I killed him!"
"No, that's not true –" she tried to say, but Vader wasn't listening. Elevator doors opening behind him, he spun around and stepped into the lift. "No, don't go!" she said.
"I am your father," Vader said when he turned back to her. "You must accept me for who I am. I will not pretend to be someone I am not. Not for you, not for anyone!"
Leia shook her head. "But don't you see?" she said. "That's exactly what you're doing."
Leia could tell that she had stunned him with this comment. Vader didn't get a chance to refute it, however, because just then the doors to the elevator shut and he disappeared out of sight.
Frustrated, Leia mashed on the button to the elevator. Determining that it would be faster to take the stairs, she spun around and ran off in the opposite direction. Her ankle quickly gave way and Leia nearly fell to the ground.
"Blasted heels!" she growled to herself. Stopping to kick them off, she resumed running barefoot. Upon reaching the stairwell, she tore the door open and made her way down as fast as she could.
Leia instinctually latched onto her father's presence through the Force. It wasn't difficult. He was so incensed, she could feel his fury radiating outward in deafening waves. She scarcely needed to follow this metaphysical beacon, however. She knew exactly where he was going.
She arrived in the docking port to see Vader stepping into the speeder which they had taken together to the Senate that morning. The port was abuzz with a hubbub of people – seedy taxi drivers, babbling astromechs, and miscellaneous Imperial personnel were all milling about. Pushing her way through the crowd, Leia waved her hands to get Vader's attention.
"Stop!" she yelled.
Vader looked up just before he sat down in the driver's seat. Suddenly, she heard someone call out to her.
"Princess, no!"
Who had that been? She felt as if she recognized the voice, but she couldn't quite place from where. Spinning around, she tried to identify the speaker when a colossal explosion nearly lifted her off her feet. She staggered away until a stormtrooper grabbed her arm and managed to stop her from falling over.
"Clear the area! There's been an attack!"
Leia's ears were ringing. Dazed, she looked up to see a fiery inferno consuming the port all around her. Great pillars of black smoke billowed upward into the sky as the fire raged. Amidst the wreckage, she saw a familiar figure attempting to crawl away from the flames before collapsing.
"No!" she shrieked.
"Get her out of here!"
"No!"
"Princess!"
"Leia!"
"Rebels! Grab them!"
"Father!"
Vaguely, she registered someone trying to drag her away from the scene. She retaliated viciously, spit flying from her mouth as she screamed incoherently.
"Let me go! My father! Father!"
She tore herself free and rushed into the flames and toward the man she couldn't afford to lose.