The moment they arrived back at the apartment, Leia let go of everything she wanted to ask.
"Were Luke and I raised on Tatooine?"
Luke stared at her. Vader stared at her. Leia didn't care.
She was tired from the journey; Luke and Palpatine's strange conversation had given her a headache to comprehend; her curiosity was eating her alive. She didn't have the patience to tiptoe around this. She wanted answers.
Her father still didn't say anything.
Luke flopped onto the sofa and buried his face in a pillow, no doubt in an attempt to hide from the fireworks about to go off. Leia just planted her hands on her hips and stared at Vader, his hulking figure backlit by Coruscant's jewel-bright twilight skyline.
"Well?" she pushed, self-righteous in her indignation, forceful in her need to know. "Were we?"
A breath hissed out of Vader's respirator. "Your report did not cover everything you did on that disgusting planet, did it?"
"Evidently not. Now stop avoiding the question."
Vader was silent for several long moments. With every rasping breath he took, Leia felt the tension build, and build, and build—
"Yes," Vader ground out. "I told you before that had Palpatine not lied to me about your mother's death, I would have found you all the sooner. That is true. I believed you dead, because. . . He told me I had killed her while she was pregnant. And the child too—we hadn't known we'd be having twins."
"How could you have not known—"
"Because the relationship was a secret," Luke said. Leia glanced over at him—he'd detached his face from the pillow and was watching their father through narrowed eyes. "They never went to a doctor because the relationship was a secret. Right, Father? Jedi weren't allowed to marry senators."
Luke voice was more cutting than Leia had ever heard it; Vader jerked back as if he'd been shot. "What? Where did you—"
"Are you or are you not Anakin Skywalker? And was she or was she not Padmé Amidala?"
Vader stared at him. Leia stared as well: he hadn't told her that. They'd probably been interrupted too early.
"Yes," Vader said finally, head bowed. "She was."
"What?" Leia shot to her feet. "Our mother is a Rebel—"
"Your mother is dead—that terrorist defiles her name with every action they take—"
"—and you didn't think it pertinent to tell me that before I was sent to hunt her down—"
"Father," Luke snapped, "why were we on Tatooine?"
Leia forced herself to calm down. Tatooine. Right. They could argue about her father's actions when they finally knew what, exactly, those actions had been.
"Yes," she added her dissent. "Tell us."
She could tell that Vader wanted to avoid the question again. His hands were clasped behind his back, his shoulders half-turned towards the twilight of the cityscape. But his mask faced Luke, and his head was completely still.
Leia glanced at her brother. He'd pushed himself up to sit on the sofa, his fists clenched on his knees, his back arched and gaze riveted to the floor.
She reached out to him and was batted away.
She pursed her lips, but Luke just lifted his head slowly to glare at their father.
Perhaps it was the glare that did it. Luke was the most affectionate of them all, on top of his hero worship; the idea of him glaring at Vader was completely alien. But here he was.
In lying about something so major, for so long, Vader might have caused damage he couldn't easily undo.
After a moment's hesitation, he started talking.
"Shortly after I turned to the dark side, your mother came to meet me on Mustafar. We. . . quarrelled, and. . . I was new to the Sith," he argued, "and you know how it feels, it's difficult to control—"
No one interrupted him; he interrupted himself. Luke had gone back to staring at his knees, completely closed off.
"I choked her," Vader said finally. "I was so angry I choked my heavily pregnant wife into unconsciousness. After that, I duelled with the Jedi Kenobi—he'd stowed away on her ship, I'd believed she'd betrayed me, that was what triggered my reaction—" He swallowed. " I duelled him. He cut off my three remaining limbs and left me to burn on Mustafar. Palpatine saved me," he gestured to his suit, "and put me in this.
"And when I woke up. . . Palpatine was there. I asked where Padmé was, if she was safe, and he said— he said that I had killed her. It was a logical conclusion to draw that I had therefore killed the two of you as well. But Palpatine had lied.
"I believed that lie for seven years."
"And what happened then?" Leia scoffed. "You just. . . dropped by Tatooine for a visit?"
"I was hunting Obi-Wan Kenobi. I wanted revenge on everything he'd done to me."
Leia folded her arms across her chest. The anger inside her was just as surprising to her as to her father; she hadn't been this angry when she first learned the truth, she'd just been. . . confused. But standing here now, having the full truth of it sink in, having her father try to defend himself—
No wonder Luke was so closed off.
"I'd heard rumours about a Jedi supposedly living in the Jundland Wastes. Even if it wasn't Kenobi, I wanted to kill something. And yet when I flew through the desert and paused to investigate a strange mirage in the Force"—mirage; there was that word again—"I was greeted by a little boy."
Luke lifted his head to look his father in the eye.
Vader said softly, "I knew who you were the moment I laid eyes on you."
A flicker of emotion crossed her brother's face, but it was too quick to identify and she still couldn't get a read on him. They were both too shut off.
They needed to have a long, in-depth chat after this.
"So you took us, and put blocks in our memories?" Leia prompted, tone flat. She raised an eyebrow at her father. It was strange seeing such a massive man fidget, but that was exactly what he did.
". . .yes," he said. "You were staying with Owen Lars, my stepbrother from my mother's marriage. I'd met him only once before, and there certainly wasn't enough goodwill between us to spare his life—nor that of his wife. They'd kidnapped you.
"And when Kenobi sensed their deaths, and understood what was happening, he came to face me and kidnap you again." His voice was dark, almost savage, when he said, "I killed him before he even came near you."
A muscle twitched in Luke's jaw.
"And then I took you back to Mustafar, and told Palpatine of your existence. He let me keep you, train you."
"And you put a block in our memories?" Leia pushed. It was the only thing that made sense—she remembered none of this, and she was pretty sure she should, by age seven.
Vader ground out, "Yes."
"Take it out."
They both turned to Luke, startled. His eyes were narrowed even further, fixed on Vader's mask.
"Take it out," he challenged. "They're my memories—I want them back."
Her father seemed hesitant. "Now?"
"Now." Luke tilted his chin up. "You neglected to mention that our mother was Padmé Amidala; we had to work that out on our own. You neglected to mention that we were raised on Tatooine; we had to work that out on our own. And you neglected to even give us our names—"
"Skywalker is weak, and dead, and you should take no pride in carrying something associated with him—"
"Is there anything else you're hiding from us?" There was an edge to his voice; it worried Leia. "Any other lies you wish to tell? If so, feel free to leave the block in." A bitter smile. "I'm sure it would make things easier for you."
Vader took a small step forward, uncertainty in every line of his posture. "Luke. . ."
"Do it." His voice cracked slightly; he glanced away, eyes glistening. "Just. . . please, do it."
It was the tears that pushed Vader over the line; Leia was sure of it. Within a few strides he was kneeling in front of Luke and placing a hand on his forehead.
"Here," he murmured.
It was odd watching it as an outsider. Leia knew the sort of fine, delicate work needed to both erect and deconstruct mental blocks, the finesse and skill. It was sometimes even a challenge just getting past a person's shields with minimal damage; even in a trained Force-sensitive who could lower the instinctive barriers by will, it required an enormous amount of deep-seated, intrinsic trust.
Luke trusted Vader intrinsically. At least, he had.
After this. . . maybe not.
They sat there for a long while, Luke's eyes closed and forehead slightly creased.
She spotted it the moment the block collapsed: Luke's eyes flew open and he gasped, clutching at his head. Vader drew back and watched him react, as impassive as ever.
Luke flinched, holding the bridge of his nose gently. Leia reached out to him—
—SEARING SUNLIGHT, LUKE LEIA LUKE DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME ONE DAY I'M GONNA THREAD THE NEEDLE BEGGAR'S CANYON LUKE COME INSIDE IT'S GETTING DARK MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR CHORES PAY ATTENTION YOU'RE TOO MUCH LIKE YOUR FATHER LEIA SIT UP STRAIGHT LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE THAT MODEL WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN HOW I MAKE BLUE MILK PUDDING YOU CAN WASTE TIME WHEN YOUR CHORES ARE DONE YOU TWO NEED TO MAKE FRIENDS BEYOND BIGGS YOU CAN'T SPEND YOUR LIVES TOGETHER YOU HAVE TO GROW UP SOMEDAY—
—and drew back just as hastily, head ringing from the onslaught.
Luke threw himself to his feet and fled the room. Vader watched him go, not rising from his kneeling position.
"Let him learn to deal with it on his own," he said in response to Leia's instinct to run after her brother. She wanted to know what was going on—what had their life been like—but she didn't want that chaos inside her head.
Vader turned the mask towards her. She sensed regret in him. "Would you like the block removed as well?"
She nodded—once, then more vehemently.
Because, chaos or not, Luke was right. Without those memories—even with them—they had no idea if their father was lying to them about anything else. And while there were some secrets which he certainly should be keeping. . . there were others which he certainly shouldn't.
"Do it."
Luke didn't know how long he'd lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, and dived into the depths of colour, sound, smell, touch, taste that had previously existed only in his nightmares.
He understood now—and he wasn't sure he wanted to.
Vader's reticence to talk about their mother.
That strange mirage that shimmered every time he tried to remember anything from before.
And those nightmares, those recurrent, endless nightmares, of desert dunes sloping away from him and the suns bleeding the sky red and a bone-deep cold despite them, despite the metal hand clutched around his, that inescapable feeling of being. . .
. . .kidnapped, confused, afraid, mournful, sadness, like a knife in his chest. . .
Lost.
Being lost.
It made a horrible amount of sense.
He'd thought they were visions. Metaphorical, perhaps—a period in his future where he would be alone, would be afraid and hurting—or just spot on. A future where he had to wander the desert feeling like he'd been simultaneously savaged and sheltered by a feral nexu.
It wasn't the future; it was the past.
The Force telling him what had happened? Or his own memory, his own power, rebelling against the lies his father told him over and over?
His name was Luke Skywalker.
He'd lived on Tatooine.
He'd lived with two moisture farmers. Owen and Beru Lars, he remembered. Aunt Beru had drilled it into the both of them mercilessly: if you're ever lost, say my aunt and uncle are Owen and Beru Lars, they run a moisture farm near Anchorhead. . .
He couldn't remember their faces. It was all a blur.
It made him cry harder.
Because sudden emotions were welling up in his chest, spilling out; he'd loved them, he and Leia had loved them, they were their family. He'd forgotten what it felt like, hadn't felt it in ten years, and now it demanded his attention. It should have run its course by now, years ago.
Instead, it had festered behind hat blasted mind block—
A violent resentment surged in his throat his chest; he sucked in his breath. He hated his father for taking this from him. He'd killed them.
He lied.
He'd stolen their memories, and Luke had unknowingly rewarded him for it by giving him everything he had.
He was the father Luke had dreamed about for so long—not a navigator on a spice freighter, after all.
Luke had given him too much credit.
Luke had given him everything. And Vader hadn't given anything in return, he'd just. . . taken.
Taken, and taken, and taken.
He didn't know why he was surprised. His father was the Emperor's executioner: he took lives left, right and centre. What were a few memories compared to that?
How could he possibly think twice about ripping their lives asunder when he did it to others with such wild abandon?
Why would Luke be any different?
Tears burned behind his eyelids.
He'd wandered outside that day. He shouldn't have wandered outside that day.
But he'd wanted to be there to greet Uncle Owen when he came back from fixing the 'vaporators; Leia had broken his T-16 model and he'd wanted to get away from their quarrel; he'd wanted to watch the sun set over the homestead. . . There were so many reasons.
None of them mattered now.
Because he'd decided to walk up to that strange droid-he-somehow-knew-was-a-man on the speeder and hadn't thought to run when it collapsed to his knees before him and hugged him.
And then, not ten minutes later, the furor, horror, terror that tore through his aunt's face before the lightsaber tore through her body. Someone had screamed—Luke, Leia, both? He couldn't remember.
He couldn't remember, because it had been ten years and his father hadn't told him—
Leia had hated Vader instantly. She'd kicked and screamed when he wrapped a hand round her bicep, sobbed when he'd killed Old Ben in front of them as well—they hadn't been all that fond of Old Ben, but they'd known of him, he'd come to save them from the monster—and hadn't quietened until Vader forced her to.
Luke's fist twisted in the pillowcase.
No wonder they were both so desensitised to violence. He and Leia—
Leia.
He threw himself upright.
Leia.
Now he dragged himself out of his own thoughts, he could hear her emotions banging on his mind. There wasn't as much despair as there was inside him; Leia never had time for that. Instead there was anger, an all-consuming, all-encompassing rage—
There was a crash from the next room over.
Luke was on his feet and out of the room before he even thought. He strode past his father, who had turned from facing the window to look towards Leia, and just said, "Don't." His voice was hard.
Vader didn't.
Luke did. He opened Leia's bedroom door without even knocking and ducked the hairbrush that came flying for his face.
"If you were aiming for Father's mask, you need to work on your aim. He's taller than me."
Leia chucked a comb at him for good measure. "Have you come to tell me to calm down?"
He caught it, and tossed it to the side.
"No," he said baldly. "I'm angry too." He summoned her lightsaber from its position on her bedside table and held it out as a peace offering. "I figured we could be angry together."
Leia glared at the saber for a moment, then yanked it out of his hand. "Get ready to be beaten into a pulp."
He snorted. "Don't flatter yourself."
"That"—slash, slash, downward stab—"utter piece of"—a roll, a duck as the red blade whistled over her head, teeth gritting as it sliced away a few burning hairs—"lying"—a flash of yellow as they connected, the crash resounding in her ears—"poodoo."
"I guess this explains why we took to Huttese so well in languages class."
Her saber soared down over her head, two hands on the hilt, to collide with Luke's again. She yanked it back and brought it down again, harder, like a hammer on an anvil. It was cathartic. "How"—crash—"are you"—crash—"so"—crash—"calm!"
"Trust me." Luke stepped back and her slash sliced through the air where he had been, hard enough to cleave flesh and bone had they still been there. "I'm not."
"Then why—" She stopped mid-swing, answering her own question with a bitter laugh. "You're pretending for me."
"It makes it easier to hold together."
"You don't need to pretend. I remember when you had a complete and utter meltdown because you wet the bed." Slash, hack. "At least, I do now."
"Please," Luke scoffed. "We both know I wet the bed long after we arrived on Mustafar."
A laugh ripped out of her at that, no humour to it. She dropped her lightsaber; it clattered away across the floor as she dragged her hands across her face. "That was awful."
She kept laughing anyway.
And sobbing.
She crumpled to the floor.
Luke sank down next to her. He was sobbing too.
For a moment they sat in silence, just looking around the room. After they'd first come to Coruscant, Vader had bought—well, commandeered, more like—both the ex-apartment of Padmé Amidala and the one below it, the latter being converted into a massive nexus of training rooms. It had been a place to train when they didn't want to deal with the half hour speeder ride to the Imperial Palace, somewhere the twins could grow accustomed to how noisy and cramped Coruscant felt through the Force, without having to interact with the people who made it that way.
In theory, at least.
Now, Leia had to wonder if he'd just wanted a place to spar so that Palpatine couldn't keep too close a tab on their respective skills.
She was questioning everything now—had been since Vader told them about his coup, had been since she started looking into Padmé kriffing Amidala, who was her mother, and now she couldn't even trust her own memories, and— and—
And she hated it.
She buried her head in her hands.
Luke's voice was ragged as he said, "What are we going to do?"
"Beat you to a pulp, round two?" she suggested with no humour. A part of her was deadly serious—but the rest of her pointed out that a) she hadn't even beat Luke the first time, and b) he wasn't the person she wanted to be beating up.
He groaned, perhaps sensing both her intentions and their mutual exhaustion, and shifted so he rested his forehead on his knees. "You know full well that if you fight Father, he won't fight back."
"He might defend himself."
"No he won't. He's gone into one of his rare depressing moods, where he just stands there muttering about how he doesn't deserve us and would say thank you if a lightsaber ran him through. I can sense it."
"He doesn't deserve us."
"But do you really want to kill him?"
Leia opened her mouth—then closed it again.
Because the disturbing thing was, when she was at the height of her anger and her hatred. . . she could imagine herself doing that with little to no regret. Her anger was akin to her father's in its magnitude, and the only person in the galaxy who was safe from it was. . . Luke.
No matter how unbelievably furious she was at her brother, she could never hurt him.
At least, not badly. All was fair in sharing bunk beds and stealing leftovers.
"I want to kill Palpatine," she said instead. She didn't know how to explain that to Luke now—she would do it later, when they'd calmed down and could deal with more shocks and fractures to their tight-knit family unit. "He knew."
Everything was shattering—and it was her father's mistake.
"Join the bandwagon. Everyone wants to kill Palpatine. Side effect of being the Emperor of the known galaxy." He nudged her with his elbow. "One day, you'll be the one everyone's trying to kill."
"Thanks for the reassurance," she drawled. "Are you gonna be one of those people trying to kill me?"
"Of course not!" He looked jokingly offended by the mere idea, but she knew he was genuine. "I'll be protecting you. I'll always be on your side."
"Even if I defected to the Rebels?"
She didn't know where the words came from—and she was beyond grateful that they came out as a joke, so no one could hear the genuine doubts behind them. She just knew that somewhere between the barrage of new memories and the knowledge that Padmé Amidala was her mother, it had slotted itself into her mind that she had family who were Rebels.
It had slotted itself into her mind that she wasn't as vehemently against the idea as she might have been before.
The Alliance were against Palpatine, after all.
In fact, the only problem she had with them at all right now was that they were against her father.
Her father, who had apparently been lying to her for ten years without a hint of remorse.
Luke froze at the insinuation.
She cursed herself. She couldn't hide things like that behind jokes; Luke knew her far, far too well, he'd see through it in a heartbeat and ask questions she couldn't answer—
"If you were to defect to the Rebels," he said slowly, "I'd do my utmost best to understand why. Because I know you, I love you, and I trust that if you believe something's the right thing to do, then there's a good chance it is." He lay a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it lightly. "I'm on your side. I don't care which side that is."
She bowed her head slightly. The grin she gave him was radiant. "Likewise."
"'Likewise'?" He snorted. "I say all those pretty words and you just say 'likewise'? I thought you were the orator here."
"I am." She grinned at him. "Good orators know when to shut up."
He laughed softly at that, but he worried at his lower lip a moment later.
"If. . . you were considering leaving the Empire in favour of the Alliance," he said slowly. She sensed him cast his mind out, making sure no one—least of all their father—would walk in on them, checking there was no surveillance. "Do you have any idea what particular motives you might have?"
Leia glanced up at her brother, eyes wide. She recognised what he was doing, and she knew why—and she loved him for it.
More than anything right now, she needed someone to confide in.
"I was doing some research on Amidala," she said slowly, "and. . . a lot of her ideas—the ones from the Clone Wars and before," she added, "not any of the violent guerrilla attacks—seem. . . decent? At least." She took a deep breath. "A lot of what she did and what the Republic did doesn't quite fit in what Palpatine told me about the Old Republic. It sounds. . . better than he made it out to be. I don't know." She rubbed her arm, glancing at her lightsaber, lying innocuously on the floor. "Less fear."
"I know what you mean," Luke said. And he meant it, which lifted the weight of worlds off of Leia's shoulders. She wasn't the only one who'd been having doubts. "I've been thinking about how the Empire is run, what it means, and. . . I think Father's too harsh. On his troops, the Inquisitors—"
"The Inquisitors deserve it."
"Do they, though?" Luke pushed. "Why?"
Leia tried to find something to say, but came up blank. "I just. . ." Don't like them. That was a pathetic reason, and she knew it.
Luke shrugged. "Think about it. If Father hadn't found us," he said the word with disdain, "and Palpatine had instead. . . would that be us?"
"If Palpatine had found us, the outcome would've been the same. He'd have given us to Father—"
"Would he?" She could tell by his tone that Luke was just wondering aloud. "Or would he have kept us in the Inquisitorius, kept us loyal, and not told Father until he needed to use us as leverage?"
"I. . ." She hadn't thought about that before. It was clear Luke hadn't, either; they exchanged horrified glances.
Because they knew which one it would've been.
"But I think the entire Empire is too cruel in its punishments," Luke continued softly. "You heard what Palpatine said—mercy fosters loyalty. And yet he never practices that tenet—not in any meaningful way. I think that if the galaxy is built on the people. . ."
". . .then keeping the people happy should be our priority," she finished. "I. . . can see where you're coming from."
He smiled softly. "Yeah, well." He glanced down at his lap. "It's just an idea."
She leaned her head against his shoulder. She was tired, all of a sudden—her world had been shattered and reforged in the span of a few hours, and she wasn't sure how to feel about any of it.
But her brother was here. She was here. And, although she might be angry at him at the moment, her father was here as well.
Everything would be alright.
She closed her eyes. "It's just an idea," she echoed, murmuring, and desperately tried to ignore the unspoken words that hung on the air:
For now.