A/N: in the last chapter, somebody commented that han was planning a surprise dinner for leia, hence why he didn't want her in the kitchen with her - i apologize for the confusion, as that was a reference to a running joke across the story that leia can't cook if her life depended on it.

Ameera stepped out of the bathroom with a heavy breath, her skin feeling clean and smooth again. She had wrapped herself in an orange silk robe, having stolen it from Padmé's wardrobe earlier that day. Its color did not match the natural bluish tone of her skin at all, hence why she had chosen it.

She was ready to call it a day, although it was still early and everybody else in the house was still wide awake and she could hear their faint conversation from the other side of the door. She didn't mind stepping away from the festivities; in fact, she was counting on their loud presence aside to secure her fast falling asleep.

However — she had not expected to stumble out of her bath to find a princess indecorously lying in her bed.

"Hm. What the fuck," she curtly announced herself, having Leia acknowledge her presence there at last with sleepy eyes.

"Ameera," she turned her body around so she was laying on her side, facing the Twi'lek in her very shining orange outshine. "That's, em, a pretty look."

Ameera proudly fixed the robe around herself. "Forgive me, Your Highness. I wasn't expecting company. Or to have royalty uninvitedly barging into my private room and taking over my bed."

At the sound of that, Leia only made herself more comfortable. "Come join me, peasant."

Ameera rolled her eyes but did as she was told, unashamedly throwing herself on the mattress across from Leia. She allowed her body to relax; if she were lucky, she would fall asleep before she had to entertain Leia.

"You were in there for a long time," Leia quietly commented.

Ameera snapped her eyes open to give her a look. "Because you never took a bath long and hot enough to make your skin crawl?"

"Yes, but I usually have my very unpleasant reasons to do so," she replied, serenity still written all over her face.

Ameera simply shrugged. "I'm fine, Leia."

Leia accepted that silently, not pressing her for further information.

Which Ameera saw as her perfect tactic of getting her to talk, and groaned loudly at that.

"Fine—It was your stupid husband."

"Han is not my husband."

"He has it so badly for you that you had him cooking an entire meal for us. What else am I supposed to call him?" she grunted. "Anyway—It wasn't his fault. It was me, he didn't do it on purpose. He was annoyed that I had ruined the food so he threw the pan over the counter. I was on my back, I wasn't looking, so the bang — it caught me off guard."

Leia smiled sadly at that. "We can't control our triggers."

"Nope," she replied inelegantly, followed by a sigh. "What triggered you to come here?"

"That's the thing, isn't it," Leia laughed a laugh full of disdain to herself, "Nothing triggered me."

Ameera corked up one eyebrow. "If there's one thing I learned from all the nightly counseling sessions I gave to your mother—if a girl is crying in bed to me, there is a crisis happening."

Leia huffed ironically. "You're that well versed in the Skywalker women crisis already?"

"I got a degree from Skywalker University myself," she said.

She rolled her eyes gently and turned to lay on her back and face the ceiling again.

"I'm a terrible person."

Ameera eyed her profile suspiciously, "I'm going to need a few more details before I can make a judgment call."

Leia dramatically exhaled. "Ameera—For all the time I spent antagonizing Padmé, I surely didn't miss my chance to start feeling… jealous… now that she and Ahsoka are as thick as thieves."

The Twi'lek compressed her lips on a line in her best attempt to suppress the sneer turning up the corners of her mouth. She looked at Leia with her big blue eyes that surely seemed they were more amused than they should be and said, "Yup. You're a terrible person."

Leia groaned loudly; she didn't need confirmation on that much.

"I didn't even notice that that was what I was feeling before I accused Luke of being jealous," she confessed, "And you know what's the worst part of it?"

Ameera hummed, intrigued.

"He isn't."

At last, Ameera guffawed freely.

"So your issue isn't that you're jealous of a random girl that dropped from the sky and suddenly became your mother's best friend, but that you're jealous and mommy's little boy isn't?"

She wrinkled her nose, making a face. "Both, maybe…?"

Ameera chortled. "I've told Padmé before, but watching your drama unfold is more entertaining than any daytime soap opera."

Leia chose to ignore that. "It's just — she's everywhere. When she's not being Padmé's best friend forever, she's spending time with Luke and telling him about all of hers and Anakin's adventures across space. It's infuriating. It's like I can't have any of my family without having her tangling herself in our affairs."

"What about Han?" Ameera proposed, "I mean, I don't think Han wants anything to do with her."

She crossed her arms, "Han is currently outside playing cards with her because he's so determined at beating her in a game without feeling a single emotion that she can sense and therefore call his bluff."

Ameera snorted. "How's that going?"

"Terribly, of course," she denounced. "The only Force sensitive person he knows how to beat is Luke, and that's only because Luke feels too guilty to cheat."

Ameera laughed one last time before returning to the topic at hand, "She seems like a nice person, you know."

"I know," Leia agreed softly. "I've talked to her. She's funny, she's charming, she's a bliss of a person to be around."

Raising her head slightly, Ameera rested her jaw on the palm of her hand. "You're afraid Padmé will replace you for her?"

Leia scoffed angrily, "Well, I'm not that much of a bliss of a person to be around."

"Padmé might disagree with you there."

"Padmé hasn't properly talked to me ever since Ahsoka came…!"

"You look cute when you're jealous," Ameera condescendingly replied.

Making a sad face, Leia looked at Ameera again. "Am I that terrible of a person?"

"I think you're human, and humans get jealous for no apparent reason at all," Ameera shrugged. "Maybe if you went to Padmé instead of me and addressed your feelings to her instead…"

She gasped in horror, "I'd die of embarrassment before I ever did that."

"Then you're stuck with my half-assed advice for the time being," she shot her shoulders up and down.

Leia looked at her suspiciously, "I don't remember you actually giving me any advice."

Ameera seemed to think for a long time. "Steal Padmé back for yourself. Segregate Ahsoka, leave her to weep in her solitude."

Against her better judgment, Leia chuckled.

"That's terrible advice, Ameera."

"It's what I can offer today," she said, switching her body into a more comfortable position and placing her arm over her eyes, to block the light.

Leia didn't fail to see her reaction, and any social formality would have her excusing herself to leave Ameera to rest. Instead—

"Would you like me to stay until you fall asleep?"

Ameera didn't even move.

"Will you poke me to see if I'm asleep and risk waking me up again?"

"I wasn't planning to."

A prolonged silence again.

"Okay."

Content enough with the answer, Leia returned to her daydreaming.

Han Solo was very concentrated on his game as he did his best to leave his mind blank — which, all things considered, proved to be nearly impossible, but he wasn't past himself for trying.

In fact, as of the moment, the only feeling that Ahsoka would be getting from him was annoyance, because Luke Skywalker had decided he would sit by them and talk Ahsoka's ears off while they played sabbacc. Initially, Han assumed he would be a great distractor for Ahsoka so he would somehow beat her, and he had been miserably wrong — the Togruta was perfectly capable of entertaining their game while also entertaining Luke in his ramblings. Although Han wouldn't call Luke a distractor for himself, he was definitely an inconvenience.

And Han had let him know, several times, that he was irritating him. In response, every single time, Luke apologized from the bottom of his heart, yet continued to pester Ahsoka with some brand new question that was completely not relevant at all.

"Ahsoka, had you heard of me before?"

That had been his last inquiry, and Han glared at him at his sudden need for validation.

Naturally, Luke didn't know how to pose a self-centered question without getting incredibly self-conscious.

"I ask, ern, not because I think I'm worth remembrance, but, well — I still carry my father's name."

Padmé looked at him from the distance; she had been entertaining herself with a book, laying on the couch across the room from the table where they were playing, channeling out their conversation. That question, however, caught her off guard, so she found herself staring at her son's profile.

"I think you're pretty much worth remembering," Ahsoka spoke levelly, still gazing intently at the cards on her hand. She wasn't the galaxy's greatest player of sabbacc, but she did have the Force as her aid, and she was determined to win — both for her own pleasure and Han's disdain.

"Would you dare to say," Luke anxiously started fidgeting with his hands on his lap, "That my father was worth remembering too?"

Ahsoka knitted her brows together, surprised at how fast he had gone from one question to another. "Luke, if you dared to ask anybody who lived through the Clone Wars, they would have nothing but kind words when talking about your father."

Luke scratched the back of his head. "I don't — don't actually know anyone from the Clone Wars that's still alive. Ben did speak well of my father, but he lied to me about Vader, and he also allowed me to be separated from Padmé, so I have my reservations concerning him. Then, there was my uncle, who told me lie after lie about the man that had fathered me, so determined he was to ruin Anakin's image. There are you and my mother, of course, but the two of you are slightly — biased when it comes to him. There aren't many people left to whom I can talk about."

Ahsoka considered his assertion for a while, carefully placing one card on the table. She called Rex to mind, but she had no means of assessing where her friend was as of late, neither if he was still alive. Sparing a single thought of her old friend, she put him to rest in the back of her head, where all the memories of those she had lost were safely tucked in, only to remember them when she needed them the most.

"You could ask — Mon Mothma."

Luke's eyes broadened; there was someone who he had known for ages and never made the connection that she had been a key player in the Clone Wars, not even after Padmé came back and he saw how close the two women were. Unfortunately for him, he discarded the thought all too fast.

"Can't do that," he whispered, having Han scoff at him.

Ahsoka was lost both to his declaration and to Han's reaction. "And why is that?"

"Have you looked at Mon Mothma?" he emphasized, gesturing wide with his hands. "She's very tall. And very scary too."

Ahsoka glared at him. "You're telling me that you could easily face Vader and Palpatine but you draw a line when it comes to Mon Mothma?"

Luke shook his head; he wouldn't expect her to understand. "Very scary."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine—Then have your sister talk to her and deliver a report to you."

Luke tilted his head; hadn't she been listening at all?

"What makes you think I'm not scared of Leia?"

Ahsoka grunted. "So what you're saying is, you're intimidated by women in positions of power."

"Terrified," Luke guaranteed.

"He's also terrified of Ameera," Han jumped it, "You might just say he's frightened of women overall."

Ahsoka chortled both at Han's comment and at Luke's cheeks sudden gain of color.

"Why aren't you scared of Padmé?" she asked.

"She coddles me a lot."

Away from the three of them, Padmé huffed a laugh.

"Okay. Why aren't you scared of me?"

"I'm just very good at hiding."

Amused, Ahsoka shook her head negatively.

"Anyway—No, Luke, I hadn't heard of you before I came here," she confessed, "I was a spy in one of the most secure rebel networks. We were supposed to keep our identities as secret as possible, so it didn't give us much room to catch up on what was happening on the more visible layers of the rebellion."

Luke considered her with sad eyes, feeling his mother's stare piercing a hole through his skull. "Would you have recognized me, had you heard my name?"

Her tongue traveled across her wet lips. "I didn't know any other person named Skywalker, nor if it was a common name across the galaxy. Then again, I didn't know Anakin to be expecting a child either."

He sighed; Ahsoka placed all her cards down the table, dismissing their game.

"Where is this coming from?"

"Hm? Nowhere, I'm—I guess I'm just musing," he exhaled again, avoiding looking at any of the three people who were now ostensibly staring at him. "It's just — I had such a terrible time when I learned that Vader was my father. I assume, if I had known anybody who had been friends with my father when he was still Anakin — perhaps it would have been easier."

"I doubt that," Ahsoka said earnestly, her eyes fixated on him. "Luke, shared experiences don't mean we can pass on wisdom on what it's like to learn that Anakin and Vader shared a soul. We've all taken the blow in our own ways, and there isn't enough intelligence on the matter that would ease what you went through. Just take your sister for consideration. She was the last one to learn about Vader and she's got all these people to tell her of the amazing man that Anakin once was. It doesn't matter, our stories will never erase the hurting she feels inside."

"It's different—"

"No, it's not," Ahsoka interrupted him.

"But it is," Luke insisted. "Leia already has a father."

He allowed his words to linger in the air for a while, perpetuating silence crushing them all.

"Leia never had to experience what it's like to have all your idealizations of this man — this man larger than life itself — crushed right in front of you. I worshipped Anakin from the moment I was born. Vader stole me of that."

Silence became heavier than before; Luke was well aware that he had been responsible to craft this new tension and giggled softly at himself.

"Sorry. I don't know why I brought it up," he said awkwardly, looking at his mechanical hand as he opened and closed his fist over and over again. It felt so real, it looked so real; only he could feel the wires under the flash, only he would ever know just how much it bothered him. "It's just — I guess I'll never truly recover from that moment, from hearing Vader tell me after he had defeated me in battle, after he had cut off my hand and essentially beaten the shit out of me — that he was my father. That moment… Nothing else mattered. Not the rebellion, not my friends that I had come to save. The truth hurt so much that I chose to fall into the abyss than to face it."

Padmé's breathing got stuck in her throat, and she found herself standing and walking towards him in a heartbeat. Hesitant to initiate any sort of physical but desperate to let him know that she was there.

"Luke—"

Luke smiled sadly, turning his body towards his mother but still looking down. "It's okay, mother. That was then, and then is not now."

That didn't make her feel any better, though.

"For what it's worth," he carried on, addressing nobody in particular, "I didn't want to die, not really. But if I came to die from the fall, then so be it. Death was still more appealing than answering my father's request of joining him in the Dark side. It will always be."

Hence why he and his sister had promised each other they would put their personal emotions aside and never allow the other to fall into darkness.

They would never put their families through that. Not when they knew exactly what it was like to be the offspring of evilness themselves.

He felt Padmé's hands on the back of his neck, and he appreciated the motherly comfort.

"I understand very well," Ahsoka said, at last, her chin resting on the palm of her hand. "I had — a very similar experience when I first learned that Anakin and Vader were the same person."

Luke turned slightly towards her, letting her know he would listen if she wanted to speak but not pressuring her.

"I had felt Anakin's presence, and I couldn't understand it. Because Anakin was dead, so how could it be? How could Anakin be intertwined with this coldness and bitterness that I had felt in Vader? Well, all signs were leading me to the truth, but I refused to listen to my better sense," she said, her eyes lost in the scenery. "The time for me to duel Vader had come, and Vader told me exactly what I wanted to hear — that he had killed Anakin for being weak."

Luke let out an ironic laugh. "That was exactly what Ben told me when I first met him."

"You were determined to become a Jedi because Anakin had been a Jedi. He was your inspiration, he was your source of greatness. Had Ben told you the truth right then, your spirits would have been crushed long before you could have achieved anything, maybe it would have stopped you from achieving anything," Ahsoka inferred from the things she had been listening to ever since she had arrived.

Although Luke heard her point, he was quick to deflect the matter from him. "When did you come to learn about Vader's identity?"

Ahsoka sighed at his reaction, but if he wanted to hear her story, then her story she would tell him.

"We were dueling and I wounded him, cutting off part of his helmet and revealing some of the man that his armor tried to refrain inside," she said, "That moment, Anakin broke through Vader's shell momentarily. He called for me, and it was like he was begging me to save him. And I was determined to save him, I told him as much, I told him that I wouldn't leave him again — in the end, it didn't matter. Anakin succumbed back into darkness all too fast, there was nothing I could do. The only one who could save Anakin was Anakin himself."

"I wish you could have been enough," Luke whispered. "It would have spared — a lot of heartbreaks."

Ahsoka chuckled comfortably. "Perhaps it would. My point is, Luke, we've all got our own stories with Vader. We might be able to share them now, but back then? Back when we were first experiencing the pain of it all? I'm sorry, I don't think any camaraderie would magically fix it."

"I suppose you're right," he sighed, at last allowing his muscles to relax and the tension to evade his back.

The four of them entered a brief silence into which Leia walked in complete oblivion.

"Goodness me, who died here?"

Her poorly timed comment earned her four sets of glares to obnoxiously staring at her, leaving her in confusion. She was left disorientated when they all shrugged and forced the tension away.

Her presence indicated their conversation about Anakin had come to an ending.

"You disappeared after dinner," Padmé commented, still unable to let go of Luke.

"I was with Ameera," she said simply, walking up to them and mimicking Padmé's pose by placing her hand on Han's shoulder.

"Are you considering leaving me for her?" Han asked, feigning hurt.

"You know, I did think about it, but then I realized that two people who can't cook in a relationship wouldn't be a nice match," Leia quipped.

"So that's all I'm good for, Your Worshipfulness?" Han probed, indignant. "My incredible cooking skills?"

Ahsoka turned to Padmé and mouthed — your worshipfulness? — to which Padmé defeatedly shook her head.

"No," Leia innocently replied, "You also know how to clean."

Han made a face of concession, and Leia leaned down to kiss his cheek.

"You were with Ameera for a long time," Padmé interrupted their friendly quarrel, "Is everything alright?"

"Oh, you see, Ameera has just gotten her period for the first time, so I had to give her the girl talk."

Maybe it was the distress from the conversation still playing on his mind, maybe it was the dead tone of his sister's voice, maybe it was a combination of both that led Luke into saying, "I didn't know Twi'leks got their period so late into life."

That comment alone earned him three deadly female eyes on him, and only then he heard what he had said.

"Ern — can we pretend that didn't happen?"

"Absolutely not," Han promised, "We might mock you for being scared of women, but we really need to step up in our game and start bullying you for not knowing bantha shit about women."

Luke's face rouged.

"As I've noticed that it's bullying Luke time," he grunted, "I'll take it as my cue to go to bed."

Leia laughed at him; Padmé gave him one last squeeze before pulling away as he stood up.

"You're sure you're going to sleep already?" Ahsoka asked, Padmé's voice still echoing loudly on her head — help them, help them, help them.

"I'm certain," he said. "I'll meditate for a while, and I'd rather do it in privacy to properly find peace of spirit."

Leia frowned at his implication, being the only one astray to his words.

He kissed his mother goodnight, then walked around the table to do the same to Leia. He had just turned on his back when Han shouted at him.

"Hey, kid, where's my goodnight kiss?"

"No goodnight kisses for anybody who's being mean to me," Luke replied, not bothering to face Han again.

"You kissed Leia!" Han said, but whether Luke heard him, he didn't know, as the Jedi had already disappeared into the hall that led him to his room.

"Well, I guess I'll retire as well," Padmé announced, then made a face to herself as her neck turned towards her daughter, "Are you alright, Leia? I feel like it's been a while since we last properly talked."

Leia bit down hard on her tongue to hold back a sardonic sneer; oh, the irony of it all.

"I'm fine," she said instead. "Go to bed."

If she heard anything else in Leia's voice, she chose to ignore it as she departed without a further word.

"Should we go too?" Han asked, trying to look up at her but their angles impeded him from seeing her face.

Leia leaned down to kiss him again. "You go ahead. Warm up the bed for me, I'll be right in."

He obeyed her command without a word, although he kissed her dearly on the lips before leaving.

Princess and former Jedi were left on their own, but not for long, as Leia followed to the balcony without a word, wanting to catch some fresh air before she tucked in for the day.

Ahsoka gave Leia some space before going after her.

She stepped outside as loudly as possible, a sixth sense telling her that Leia wouldn't like to be sneaked upon. When she heard the princess sigh audibly — annoyedly, too? — Ahsoka became certain that her presence had been noticed.

"Are you running away from me?" she asked, playfully, although she expected a sour response in return.

"Are you spying on me?" Leia rebuked, not bothering to turn around.

Ahsoka shrugged, not answering; she just walked ahead and hopped over the balcony, sitting there with her legs hanging over the abyss.

Leia eyed her skeptically. "You're going to fall from there."

Ahsoka looked down at the Coruscanti life happening under them, then jerked back in indifference.

"I've fallen from greater heights than this and lived to tell the story."

Leia huffed; she didn't doubt that at all.

"Please don't have a bright idea and hop over as well," Ahsoka begged, "I'd hate for our enjoyable evening to be ruined when you fall over and I'll have no choice but to jump after you and save you from imminent death."

She discreetly laughed. "I won't give you any trouble. Bright idea?"

Ahsoka made several grunting sounds with her throat. "Do you have how many times I had to rescue your father from one of his bright ideas?"

Leia made a face.

"Sorry — I meant Anakin," she sincerely apologized. "You'll have to forgive me. I have to talk to Luke exactly about the things that I can't talk to you about."

"You can talk about Anakin to me," Leia said gravely, "I just can't promise I won't punch you in the face."

Ahsoka laughed freely at that. "For the sake of my face, I'll refrain myself from talking about Anakin."

Leia offered her a firm nod and just that.

"You know, Padmé is desperate that I help the two of you," Ahsoka admitted, her legs swinging freely in the air.

Leia gave her a dirty look.

"Thing is, I have no idea how to help you," she confessed. "I don't know if I'm afraid of the responsibility of taking the children of my former Master under my care, I don't know if I'm just afraid of what might happen if the both of you touch this raw power you have inside of you. I know, however, that I'm afraid."

"I thought that the Jedi creed was that fear was a pathway to the dark side," Leia snapped, ignoring the things that she didn't want to hear.

Ahsoka looked at her funnily, "You don't believe that, do you?"

She threw her hands in the air. "I'm not the Jedi here."

Ahsoka smiled sadly to herself, facing ahead once more. "Yeah. Me neither."

Leia felt a twitch at her heart, and she immediately regretted the harshness of her tone. After all, she knew better than that.

"Do you ever miss it?"

"All the time," she confessed. "I missed the Jedi when I walked away, but now, knowing that I can't ever come back… That sort of ache is breathtaking, and I don't say that in a good way."

Leia understood it all too well.

"Well — I don't think that Jedi would take me back if I randomly decided to come back years later. It wasn't their way," she snorted to herself. "Still. Knowing that they were still there was a comforting thought. But I don't need to tell you that."

"You don't," Leia whispered.

"So, long story short," Ahsoka's vivid tone was back on her voice. "I'm expected to help you with your losses — and I do include the loss of your identity here after you learned Vader was your progenitor — and I'm supposed to help the odd twin over there with his daddy issues. How am I supposed to do that, though, I have yet to figure out."

Leia appreciated Luke's namecalling as a means of easing the tension between them. "I'll save you your effort, then. I don't want to be trained."

"Oh, but I'm not going to train you," she dismissed the matter quickly. "I'm certain that, if the time ever comes when you choose to train in the ways of the Force, your brother will be all the guidance you need."

"Then, I don't think there's anything that your skillset might be able to provide me with," Leia said, not intending to disregard Ahsoka's infinite potential, but there was nothing that she could offer her outside of her knowledge of the Force that Leia couldn't seek in somebody else. Somebody she was already familiar with.

"Unfortunately, that isn't true," she turned her body completely towards Leia, and Leia was certain the only thing keeping her in balance was the Force. "Let's talk about Tatooine, Leia."

Leia's eyes now burned as a sense of betrayal washed over her.

"Did Padmé tell you—"

"Nobody told me anything," Ahsoka reasoned, still calm.

Unlike Leia, who had her hands clenched in fists of hate. "Somebody did. You can't infer that from simply hanging around, no matter how strong you are in the fucking Force."

"Nobody did," she repeated, studying the princess' body language as much as she could amidst the darkness of the night. "You see, Luke is desperate for any anecdotes from the Clone Wars, be them good or be them bad. All he wants is to hear stories about the man that his father was, so that's what I've spent most of my time here doing — just telling him stories. But when I spoke about the time we were captured and enslaved, Luke just looked at me dead in the eyes and said, you should ask Leia about Tatooine, before he walked away."

Still, Leia didn't as much flinch.

"I sincerely hope you won't start thinking that your brother betrayed your trust, Leia," Ahsoka ameliorated. "He never meant to. He would never willingly do anything to hurt you, but he knows that this — whatever it is — hurts you. He reached out to me because he wants to help you, but that isn't something that he can help you with."

"I hate to break this to you, but Luke is mistaken," Leia looked ahead of her away, "I'm over it already."

Ahsoka compressed her lips, "You and I both know that's not true."

"Fine, I just don't want to talk about it with you."

"Anakin never spoke about it either," Ahsoka said loudly, well aware that that one sentence could do more harm than good but still feeling positive about saying it. "He never spoke about his past, about his time as a — slave. He was a slave all throughout his childhood until the Jedi found him and rescued him, I'm not sure if you knew it. My point is, until that unfortunate event, Anakin never spoke about his enslavement. I learned it from Obi-wan, Anakin never even addressed it directly to me. But when we all got captured and enslaved because of one of his bright ideas, he was so angered at himself. So guilty. Understanding the harshness of being enslaved, he would never wish it on anybody else, much less on two of the people he considered the most."

"Anakin enslaved the entire galaxy," Leia accused, deliberately saying his name over Vader's. Ahsoka understood it to be her diplomatic way of slapping her in the face, and a successful blow it was.

"As it happened, Anakin was forced to choose between spending the rest of his life in chains or having Obi-wan and I killed," Ahsoka continued, ignoring the sour taste on her mouth, "To many Jedi — that choice would have been an easy one. Jedi are supposed to be selfless, so the natural path would be to sacrifice themselves to save others. To Anakin, the answer didn't come so easily. He knew exactly what it was like to be enslaved, and he never wanted to experience that sort of impotence and cruelty again."

"That's bold coming from the guy who then proceeded to impose cruelty on anybody that came on his way," Leia spat again.

"Several things led Anakin into becoming that guy. Watching his friends be enslaved and being powerless to save them was one of them. His despair to save those he loved was one of them," Ahsoka said. "It's no justification, I would never try to justify him to you nonetheless. It was what happened, though."

Leia tiredly placed one of her hands in her template. "I don't want to know, Ahsoka. I don't want to hear his name."

"Okay," she slowly conceded, "I'll talk about what it was like to be enslaved, then."

Leia shook her head. "I don't want to hear it, Ahsoka. I just want — I just want to sleep in peace. This conversation, whatever it is, will steal me of that."

Ahsoka considered her carefully. "If only thinking about it will steal you of your sleep, then you're not doing as well as you think."

"I'm perfectly aware of how well I'm doing, hence why I don't talk about it."

At last, Ahsoka jumped back to safe ground, inches away from Leia. "How else will you deal with the memories? Bad memories — they come whether you want them or not."

"Which brings me back to my point — why would I want to ruin the perfect day I've had here today by willingly thinking of it again?"

"That's not how it should work, Leia."

"Well, forgive me then. If you've written a textbook on how to get over traumatic experiences, don't be shy, share with the rest of the class."

"I understand that being rude when it hits too close to home is your favorite coping mechanism, and it might even work on most people. But it won't on me."

After hearing that, Leia forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. "What do you want from me, Ahsoka?"

"I want you to listen. Can you do that?" she asked, "I don't ask for much."

Leia's static composure was enough corroboration for her.

"I've been through my fair share of shit across my life," Ahsoka said as crudely as possible. "They shaped me into who I am today, but that doesn't mean I'll ever truly be okay with the atrocities that happened to me. Being enslaved, of all things, remains at the top of the things that I wish I could change. At the end of the day, I can't."

"I know that, Ahsoka," Leia replied hoarsely.

"I'm certain of it," Ahsoka concurred, "Have you accepted it?"

"I have," she hissed.

Ahsoka nodded, although unconvinced. "Anakin couldn't accept it. Ultimately, that's what led him to his downfall. His refusal to accept things as they were, his despair to change things that he couldn't touch. It was very sad."

"From my perspective, sad were the things he did afterward," Leia denounced. She refused to sit idly and listen to the Anakin love train.

"So they were," she accepted that. "Yet, no matter how sad they were, you still can't change them. It's the hardest thing about life. Our incapability of saving those we love."

"You don't have to remind me of that," she sighed deeply, "I've lived with that truth for years now."

"It's still sad."

"I'm aware."

Ahsoka studied her side profile intensely, somehow amazed that there wasn't a single display of emotion there. "What I wanted to tell you, Leia, is that the pain never truly goes away. You learn how to move forward, you learn how to live with all that's happened. The pain becomes stale, but it's still so bad whenever you revisit the past. But no matter how much it hurts, you owe it to yourself not to give up."

Leia clasped her hands together, her elbows leaning on the railing. "Have you ever thought about giving up?"

"So many times," she admitted, "Giving up is easier than surviving."

Leia looked down at her hands.

"Back when I was enslaved, I was put on a cage, very nasty affair," Ahsoka reminisced, "They put one of those shock collars around me, so whenever I said something snippy — and as a witty teenager, trust me, I had my fair share of ingenious comments to entertain my captors with — they would shock me. The pain was unbearable, but the worst of it all? They managed to put me in my place. Conditioning, you know. I was so scared of the pain that I learned how to become silent. The power they have over us, their capability of stealing us of our freedom — perhaps that hurts more than how far they're willing to go to physically injure us."

Leia felt her eyes stinging, but she held her composure. "Enslavement is a form of cruelty that you're incapable of truly grasping until you go through it."

"Exactly," Ahsoka said softly. "But the emancipation that comes afterward, when you bring down that empire of evil, knowing that nobody else will have to go through that sort of pain — I would never say it makes worth of what we endured, but it comes really close."

"Yeah," she replied coldly. "Killing the beast that enslaved me with the same chains that he stole my liberty with was very cathartic."

Ahsoka smiled sadly at the first confirmation of what had happened.

"When I was enslaved — Well, we had been called on a mission to Kiros, a colonized world by the Togrutas, to investigate the sudden disappearance of their whole population. The population of my species. I might have no memory of my early years still in the care of my blood family before being taken to the Jedi Temple, but those were still my people. There aren't that many Togrutas out there, not in comparison to, let's say, Twi'leks. We're not an endangered species, not as of now, but a whole population center disappearing out of the blue? Including its leaders? That isn't good. So we came to learn that they had been captured, enslaved, and taken to the Zygerrian Slave Empire. I don't know if you've ever met a Zygerrian, but they're a very cruel people. Even when the Republic still stood, they turned to slavery to become wealthy and powerful at the expanse of others. So when they found the opportunity to kidnap Togrutas and exploit them, they took the chance. They succeeded, for our rescue mission failed miserably and we were taken prisoners ourselves. I say prisoners because naturally we had already been made war prisoners so many times by then. In reality? Being enslaved is way more unpleasant than being made a prisoner due to political reasons."

Leia listened with her muscles stiff. "Did you save your people?"

"Eventually, we did," Ahsoka said. "It wasn't easy, but that was life as a Jedi, and we also brought down that slavery facility. The Togrutas we saved… They were traumatized for life, but they were still alive, and that was the greatest achievement of them all."

Ahsoka leaned far onto the railing, almost throwing her body to the other side, with the only intention of finding the eyes that Leia refused to give her.

"You're still alive. Let's drink to that."

Leia smiled shyly. "I'm still alive."

She allowed herself to look at Ahsoka.

"Knowing that nobody else will have to suffer the same as I did under their hands makes it easier to bear," Leia said, taking a deep breath. "That's my mantra for the New Republic, anyway. I'll do everything in my power so innocent people won't have to suffer the same that we did."

"I think you're doing a great job at it already."

Leia blushed at the flattery but accepted the compliment.

"I'm sorry that you had to revisit those memories at my expense," she earnestly apologized. "I know it mustn't have been easy."

Ahsoka gently placed her hand over Leia's. "I might not be a Jedi anymore, but I still carry their creed in my core. I will always, always do everything in my power to help those in need.

Leia timidly nodded. "I hope one day I'll be able to talk about it freely as you do. But for today? I'm sorry. It's not easy to talk about it, especially to somebody who wasn't there."

"Nor to somebody to whom you barely know," Ahsoka added, huffing to herself. "I don't expect you to magically heal yourself from our little talk, I'm well aware that recovery takes time. Just promise you won't bottle it all deep down inside of you, okay, star girl?"

Leia tilted her head, a funny expression on her face. "Star girl?"

"Anakin and I were always giving each other nicknames," she reminisced fondly, "I think that suits you right. You and your brother. You came from a love bigger than the universe itself, and you were always destined for things greater than yourselves. So that's what you are — star twins."

"That's sweet," Leia acknowledged, certain that her star brother wouldn't let go of that epithet so soon. "And I won't. I promise. I'm certain Han will be in for a ride once I go to bed and crumble down in his arms."

Ahsoka looked at her seriously, ignoring the amusing tone of Leia's words. "Will he mind?"

Leia smiled the first genuine smile of the night. "Not at all."

"Okay. But if you ever need someone to knock some sense into him—"

She laughed loudly at that. "Oh, Han is constantly in need of some sense. But never regarding that."

Ahsoka felt comfortable enough to join her laughter.

"I could help you turn off your mind if you're afraid of going to sleep."

Although she appreciated the offer, Leia shook her head firmly. "No, thank you."

Ahsoka accepted that. "Is there anything I can do?"

Leia placed her hand on Ahsoka's arm, squeezing it briefly and tightly. "Good night, Ahsoka."

She walked away with her head tall.

He was standing over the abyss. Frozen in time, but when time started to pass again, he would fall. He was destined to fall.

She was standing on dry land, a tug on her neck pulling her systematically, like the tick-tock of a clock.

He looked down and he saw her. He wanted to go to her, to save her, but he couldn't move. He was his own prison.

She looked up and she saw him. She wanted to go to him, to rescue him, but she was chained to the ground. The conditioning she had suffered stole her of her freedom.

If he fell, he wouldn't reach her. He would fail her.

If she succumbed, she wouldn't reach him. She would fail him.

Yet, he fell, and she succumbed.

They couldn't save each other; they couldn't even save themselves.

They were staring into darkness itself. The shadows lurked over them, and they couldn't reach light until light forgave them for failing.

So when darkness exploded into a billion flares, they burned, but that was not the light that they sought.

They stood in the middle of the explosion, next to each other. He was wounded, he was missing a part of himself; he was defeated and his hand was no longer there. She was impaired, she was chained; she was conquered and her will no longer existed.

They were falling. And they were burning.

The fire consumed them, and they couldn't save themselves, let alone each other.

Behind the flames, the devil stood. In a black cave and a black mask, immune to the bright blazes of the inferno.

The devil would not save them. The devil would let them burn.

Just like they had once left the devil to cremate.

The flames enchanted the devil. It was the way things were meant to be.

She and he looked at each other, anything to escape the devil's watch. She was pulled back by the chain, he was pulled back by the darkness.

Their own demons, succumbing them to their greatest fears.

"You will not escape."

He was swallowed by the penumbra; she was restrained by her binds.

"Leia!" he yelled, fighting the inherited dusk on his blood, falling to his knees. He crawled, trying to sustain himself on his three limbs only; he was weaker than his urge.

"Luke!" she shouted, fighting to breathe, fallen to her knees. She writhed, trying to free herself from subjugation; she was weaker than her needs.

"Pathetic," the devil said. The flames leaped higher around them, under his command. The fire was a slave of the devil, and the devil was a slave of the darkness, and darkness was a slave of the devil's compulsion. There was no escape for none of them.

Just like he couldn't escape the slavery of his bloodline. Just like she couldn't escape the slavery of her mind. Darkness leaped higher around them, under their own command. Yet, they resisted.

They found solace in each other's presence, although they couldn't touch. They burned, but they burned together.

"No," the devil said, and then the devil was in their heads. Tormenting, tainting the one remaining beacon of light that still ignited inside of them. And it hurt. God, did it hurt.

"You will fail," the devil said, "Darkness will prevail."

The devil pierced through their minds, damaging their everlasting memory of love. The devil wanted to break them, to replace kindness for hatred, to replace tenderness of anger, so the devil crushed the light of their essence with a flick of fingers. And if they came to die from the emptiness that they became, then so be it.

He yelled.

So did she.

"Ahhhhhh!"

He woke up out of breath, sweat dripping from his forehead.

From the opposite side of the house, so did she.

"Argh," she muttered, in a seating position, unfamiliar to the soreness in the back of her head. A pain so excruciating she thought she could die.

From a room on the other side of the house, he brought his hands to his temples. His head was pulsating, he thought it would explode.

They were used to night terrors, but never like this. Never like feeling their minds were probed until there was nothing left for them to give.

"Leia? What the hell? What the fuck is going on? Talk to me, please," Han asked, despaired, both at her uncommunicativeness and at her physical state.

Because he was used to her nightmares, but never like this. Never so visceral, never so crudely.

Apart from the pain, she could only feel a tug on her neck, trying to steal her from her breath.

Apart from the pain, he could only feel part of him missing, like some of his essence had been stolen from him.

Where had it gone? He had no idea.

And then, one last beacon of light ignited inside of them, so they yelled.

"Leia!"

"Luke!"

Outside in the hall, three women were suddenly up in commotion. Unsure of what was happening, or where the screams were coming from.

"What's going on?"

"Who's screaming?"

"Are you alright?"

"I wasn't the one screaming."

"I heard more than one scream."

"They happened at the same time, I heard it too."

"What the fuck is going on?"

Two doors swung open at the same time, revealing siblings whiter than ghosts — and also one specific smuggler that looked just as baffled as the three women, but nobody paid him attention. They all just watched without reaction as brother and sister rushed to each other, seemingly unaware of all those people crowding the hall.

"What the hell was that?"

"Are you alright?"

They stood face to face with each other, yet they didn't touch one another. Almost like — they couldn't reach each other.

"Luke, my head—"

"I know, I feel it too."

They both placed their hands at the back of their heads at the same time, like they had previously orchestrated it.

"What the fuck is happening?"

"I don't know, Leia. Lord, my head will kill me."

"I know. Did you see all that?"

"I did. It was so… real."

"I know. My skin — I feel like my skin is on fire."

"Did we pull each other into our nightmares?"

"I don't know, but the amalgamation of our fucked up minds—"

"Was pretty fucked up?"

"I couldn't have said it better myself."

"Fuck."

Everybody else looked at one another with uncertainty, afraid to disturb — whatever was going on between the twins — but begging for some sort of insight.

Ahsoka was the first one to take action. She closed her eyes and she searched for their presence in the Force, and she only found pain and despair there. In her resolve to help them, she reached out to offer them peace.

"Get out of my head!"

"Get out of our heads!"

They yelled at the same time, blocking her so abruptly that Ahsoka stumbled slightly back after the severing of her connection to them. Then, the twins isolated themselves again, like nothing except them existed.

"I feel dizzy. I feel sick to my stomach, Leia."

"I know. Let's get you lying down."

She intertwined her arm around his, and their physical bond became sacred. They longed for being as close as they once were in the womb.

They disappeared into Luke's room and didn't come out again.

The four remaining people stood there, lost for words. The excruciating screams that had awoken them still echoing in their ears.

They didn't get any more sleep for the rest of the night.

A/N: the things i'd like to say about this chapter-

the initial scene with ameera exists for the solemn reason that I missed her.

the main purpose of this chapter was to have ahsoka deeply exploring the twins' trauma to properly help them afterward.

a long time ago, someone suggested that I should have ahsoka talk to leia about the time she was enslaved, and since I had just watched the enslavement arc of the clone wars, I decided to toy with the idea.

the dream? what a mess. but it's supposed to be that way. can't fight the messiness of our subconscious, especially when we have our force sensitive twin pulling us into their nightmare!

whelp, that's it. let me know what you think!

-for future reference, I'm incredibly busy these weeks (tbh i don't even know I managed to pull this chapter this week lol) so if I disappear next week, that's why.