Notes:

This ficlet was written as a response to a question by the wonderful thewritingpuss: "If you were Leia, after ROTJ, would you train with Luke to become a Jedi, or stick to politics? Why?"

This chapter contains the version I updated in January 2020 to jive better with TROS's revelations. For those who still want access to the original Jan '18 version, go to Chapter 2.

After the war, I had a lot of things on my mind—I was heavily involved in the work to assemble the new government, for one, and I was also beginning to shift my focus back to the surviving Alderaanians and what I could do for my people. Not to mention, I was newly married, and a child came soon after.

I should have been happy. All the things I'd once dreamed of (and things I'd not even dared to dream, feeling myself unworthy) had finally come to pass. Yet I found myself stuck in a darkness and a turmoil that surprised me… though in retrospect, perhaps it shouldn't have. All I had been through during the war—Alderaan, torture, Han's temporary loss to carbonite, Jabba's palace, watching too many people die (often directly or indirectly because of me), and so much more—it all began to catch up with me. And always, the mask of that monster loomed in my mind: him, the source of this evil, the cause of all this horror, and Luke had said… Luke had said he was our father.

I couldn't process it. I didn't want to think about it.

Luke had said that this father had turned back, in the end; that he'd saved his son and killed the Emperor. But all I could think of was Vader's harsh breath as I writhed on the floor from the torture meds, the splitting pain as he tried to break down my mind's barriers, his iron grip on my shoulder as everything I loved exploded into a billion tiny particles of dust, the proud, skeletal stare of his mask across the room in Cloud City as he came close to taking everything from me once again. A litany of my worst memories. The nightmares that still creep up on me, breaking into the quiet hours.

I despised Vader, with everything in me. And I was afraid. If I was the biological progeny of this twisted being, then who was I, really? Did the same potential for catastrophic evil lurk in my veins?

I had felt it, hadn't I, all my life, this strange connection, this bridge to the ebb and flow of life around me. It emerged in my empathy, my intuition, even my leadership skills—I see it so clearly now. While I will never underemphasize my parents' nurturing of those qualities, I've realized that the extent of my abilities can't be chalked up to my upbringing alone. There's always been something more, some inside force that whispers to me and guides me, that helps me persuade and fight and protect and persevere. Something that's led me back, over and over again, to hope.

The Force. Somehow, I had always known.

At first, I let Luke teach me. Things like how to meditate, how to further hone my perceptions, how to reach out and feel him and others in a fuller way, how to speak without words. I've done some crazy stunts, both physically and mentally. I've flipped over chasms and moved my fair share of rocks. I can kick his ass with a lightsaber.

I know Luke hoped I would become a Jedi, too. But the more he told me about the Jedi way, the more uncomfortable I felt, especially as the weight of all that had happened began to settle more deeply upon me.

(Our father.)

Luke says fear and anger are the path to the Dark Side.

Easy for him to say, I think. Or maybe not. I know he's struggled greatly with those things, and I would never trivialize his massive personal victories over them. Now, though, he is the picture of perfect peace, of tranquility. He trusts in the Force that all will be made right, and that in some sense, it already has.

Maybe he's right. I don't know.

But our relationships with those emotions are not the same. Anger and fear have been my constant companions for so long, I don't know if it's possible to let them go. And in truth, I'm not sure I'd really want to, at least not fully. After all, it's my anger at injustice and evil and my fear of a galaxy enchained and destroyed that has so often fueled the fire in me, giving me strength to fight, to persuade, to seek change.

But I feel the dark potential, too, of those emotions—the seething hatred, the pull towards despair that sometimes sucks me under. There are days when I no longer know how to speak, how to be; days when all the pain rises up inside me, threatening to explode.

Honestly, the storms I experience are more of a threat to myself than others, unless you count the occasional angry diatribe. (My fault, the whispers still accuse, the ashes of Alderaan smoldering in my mind still.) I will carry forever the memory of the Dark Side's evil, packed like a ball of durasteel in my core, a warning against too much power. (So much death, so many sacrifices. My fault.) I could never see myself perpetuating everything I fought so hard against, becoming the very thing I hate. (I'm a monster.) I will never.

And yet.

(He was my father.)

Other things, too, I might have to forfeit to become a Jedi; other threads making up the very fabric of who I am. Jedi aren't supposed to have attachments (Luke is undecided on whether to continue this practice, but it's been a tenant of the order for millennia). I have Han, and for that alone I'd forsake the Force in its entirety. Jedi are supposed to favor serenity over passion: my passion is my drive, part of my very nature, even. Why would I let that go? Studying the Jedi way takes full commitment: I'm already committed fully to serving the New Republic and the Alderaanian diaspora.

(He was my father.)

It was in those early days of pregnancy, while I was still training, that the visions started. Waking nightmares.

I saw myself, boiling with rage, a mask descending upon my head, the world around me red as blood.

I saw my family, people I loved, their eyes full of grief and fear.

I saw the Dark devour the galaxy once more, undoing everything.

I saw my child, once blazing in the Force with so much Light, fallen into that darkness.

I saw myself taking up my saber. Killing my son.

The last vision was the clearest. It left me with a horrible certainty; the kind of Force-fueled certainty that centers itself right in the gut and refuses to budge. Visions are not directly mapped onto the future; what one sees may never come to pass, or it may in reality have come to pass long ago. But somehow, I knew: my path forward as a Jedi would lead to my son's death, at my hand.

Whether the monster inside our blood claimed me or my son first, I still don't know.

I have so much now. Even on my darkest days, I still have so much to live for. I see the steadfast love written in my husband's eyes as he weathers these storms with me, encouraging me onward, daring me to pursue my goals, soothing me through the nightmares (as I do for him), daily sweeping me off my feet. Our love is an exquisite beauty I never thought I'd have, but here we are. I look at Luke, and Chewie, and other friends new and old, and the joy that wells up in me at the challenges we've faced together and the victory and the freedom we've won nearly takes my breath away. I gaze into the face of my precious little son, and I know that I would die, I'd do whatever it takes to continue making the galaxy a better place for him.

Whatever it takes, as long as it's right.

And that… that is why I cannot travel this path. The power that Jedi training may give me is tempting, of course. Maybe if I learned more of the ways of the Force, I'd be able to make the galaxy right. Maybe I'd be able to better protect those I love. Bring swift justice. Champion the vulnerable without the neverending tangles of bureaucracy.

But then again, maybe the galaxy has had enough of that kind of power already.

I trust Luke not to grasp for it. As he's told me, it's surrender and sacrifice, not aggression and forcefulness, that mark a Jedi's true calling. He will continue the Jedi tradition humbly and faithfully; I believe it.

And I will continue to honor my true father's legacy, as well as my mother's: serving my people in the government, and in the Senate, however I can. I'll also continue to embrace this curious Force inside me; letting it speak through me to reach hearts and minds and strike up flames of hope, the same hope that it kindled in me, against all odds, throughout the years.

But I do not want more of that power.

(He's my father.)

I reject the Dark.

No monster will ever take control of the galaxy again.