Leia watched her brother's shuttle land from a window high in the Imperial Palace, and barely dared to test their bond.

She could sense his. . . moroseness. . . from here, as well as a surprising—and paradoxical—blend of what felt like guilt and. . . resolve? She wasn't sure; she could barely unpick her own knotted emotions nowadays, let alone her brother's.

But whatever it was, it cleared slightly when she reached out to him. He reached back, and she felt herself relax, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

He reported back to Palpatine in the throne room. A few other courtiers were there, Mas Amedda, the guards, but Luke didn't even spare the onlookers a glance.

Palpatine made a curt motion, gesturing most of the courtiers away. They all filed out without delay; it did not do to keep the Emperor waiting.

Leia listened from her spot by the throne. In a moment, Luke would stand here and she would stand where he was, reporting on the events of the investigation so far. But. . .

Her brother was being oddly. . . stiff.

She could sense tension building, but she wasn't sure where.

Luke's words were hard and cold. His mind shuttered off. Leia could barely sense the lies in his voice and through the Force; she very much doubted Palpatine could. Apparently he did know how to shut his own emotions away when he needed to.

But she did sense the lie, and therein lay the question: what was he lying about?

What had actually happened?

"The operation went smoothly at first, my master," he said, kneeling. Leia didn't know why Palpatine was so intent on hearing this—it had been a routine, low-priority mission, meant to get Luke accustomed to working alone—but she suspected he had a reason. He always had a reason. "I befriended the traitors, confirmed that I had all their names, then Pryce sprung her trap and caught them all. They were escorted to the cells and I returned to the dormitories to gather my things, believing the matter to be over."

Palpatine's fingers tapped slowly on the arm of his throne, one by one. "And yet it wasn't," he said unequivocally. "You failed."

"I didn't fail at anything, Master." The words were quiet, but with a core of steel. Leia was surprised; her brother was usually a lot more. . . pliant. . . when it came to facing down Palpatine. He was either recklessly righteous, or willing to compromise. There was no in between. "I did my job. Pryce made the mistake of interrogating Wren alone, and Wren beat the stuffing out of her. One can assume that she freed her comrades from there."

A strange flutter in the Force: a half-truth. Not a lie, but only through a technicality.

"I went looking for them"—flutter—"but the dormitories are far from the holding cells"—flutter—"and by the time I arrived in the hangar Captain Skerris had already flown in pursuit of them."

He lifted his chin. "I did everything I could."

"Indeed." Palpatine's tone was not charitable. "Perhaps you did. But it still wasn't enough."

"No, Master." Luke lifted his head from staring at the floor, and met Palpatine's yellow gaze straight on. "It wasn't."

His body was slightly tensed, his head turned to the side. He was bracing himself for the lightning, Leia realised.

Palpatine glanced at her—and perhaps he was considering it, even. "You are prepared to face the punishment for failure?"

Luke kept his gaze steady and drawled with borderline insolence, "Whatever my master deems fit."

"And your sister?"

Leia's gaze snapped up. Palpatine was gesturing to her with one gnarled hand, fingers curled. "If she punishes you for your failure? It is her future Empire you have let down; you have failed her more than you have me, in allowing this threat to remain instead of crushing it here and now. What if she punishes you, as she eventually will have to in the future?"

Luke met Leia's eye, and smiled. She smiled back.

Palpatine was a master manipulator. But at his core, he did not understand love at all.

Luke shifted his gaze back to Palpatine, the smile still on his face. "My loyalties lie where they always have."

Palpatine's hand twitched on the armrest.

Leia held her breath.

Luke's smile dropped.

Finally, after one long moment, Palpatine started to laugh.

He laughed for a while. Long enough for Luke to frown slightly, and exchange glances with Leia.

Then he said, "It appears this mission was good for you after all, my boy." He smiled broadly. "You've finally grown a spine."

Leia sucked in an angry breath at the perceived insult—the fact that she'd been snapping at Luke about his habitual deference to Vader a few weeks ago did not mean Palpatine was allowed to—

But Luke just bowed his head, and made to get to his feet without being prompted. "Thank you, my master—"

"Your father would be proud."

Luke froze momentarily—Leia felt his flash of resentment—then finished rising. The corners of his lips were turned down, but he nodded in acknowledgement.

Leia watched his lips work, and knew he couldn't force the final thank you out of his throat.

She stepped forward before he had to.

"Master," she said, "so, to summarise what we've found so far. . ."

Luke was impressed that Leia waited until they'd sat down in the speeder to head home before she came out with all of her questions.

She didn't start on the one he'd expected.

"So," she said, even as she piloted the speeder past a billboard, "the Sixth Sister came looking for you while you were away."

Jade? Luke frowned. "Why in the galaxy would she do that?"

"That was what I was going to ask you."

He frowned harder. "I helped her out a bit, but—"

Leia stopped the speeder so fast that without his reflexes, he'd have been hurled over the front and into the fathoms of Coruscant. "You what?"

"I gave her some of the information our spies had gathered on Phoenix Squadron! I got Thrawn off the case! That's all I did!"

She frowned herself, but relaxed slightly, and they continued onwards. "Why?"

"She needed help, and I figured we had nothing to lose. If it warms her up to us, that might be a potential ally we have in the Inquisitorius."

"The Inquisitors are Palpatine's creatures."

"Aren't we all?"

It was both the most offensive and the most sensible thing he'd ever said to her. "Point taken. But you know that's not what I meant."

He knew. He stayed silent.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She hid it well, but there was hurt in her voice—and confusion. Distance.

Leia was perhaps the only person in the galaxy he didn't want to be distant from right now.

"You were away," he admitted. "And I wasn't sure enough about what was going on to say it over the comms, and risk someone listening in. And then you came back, from Tatooine, and—"

"I see."

He glanced at her. "So. . ."

"It's alright." She smiled a little, the neon sign they flew past lighting her teeth red, but then the smile dropped and she asked, "And now, are you gonna tell me what actually happened at Skystrike?"

He flinched.

He felt her concern a moment later, but he waved it away. "I will," he promised. "I want to tell you. But. . . I think I need to process what happened myself, first." Shame flooded him: he didn't know if it was because he'd let them go, or because he hadn't done it sooner.

If he had, Rake might still be alive. . .

Leia was quiet for a moment. "You've been keeping a lot of secrets recently."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I know you are." She let out a breath, and the shame inside him tripled. He knew that wasn't her intention—that if he said he needed to work things out on his own, she believed him—but it did anyway. "I just don't like that you have to."

Neither did he.

They were twins. They'd been inside each others' heads more than their own since before they were born. Working things out alone was as alien a concept to them as democracy, or righteous rebellion.

But things were changing rapidly now, and Luke didn't like how rapidly they were changing with them.

Leia weighed up the comlink in her hand and glanced at the contact information for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Contacting Tsabin—Sabé—would be risky. No, beyond that. It would be treason.

She supposed she could argue that she was still investigating every Rebel lead she had, but. . .

She had to do this, she reminded herself. If only to understand her enemy more: Sabé had been more than willing to answer her questions before, no doubt in her misguided and pointless—utterly pointless—attempt to convert Leia, or some equally foolish crusade. It was ridiculous, of course, and doomed to fail, but Leia might as well take advantage of it.

Of course, she knew that understanding her enemy was not the reason she was doing this, but she didn't want to think about that.

Whatever had happened on Skystrike, Luke didn't want to talk about it in great depth. Or at all. And Leia wasn't used to the two of them keeping secrets from each other.

Whatever had happened, it was big, and he was keeping it from her.

Which was well within his rights (provided such a thing was not a threat to them all, as stated in Imperial law), but—

It was petty, and pointless, but—

She kind of wanted to keep something big from him in retaliation.

That still wasn't the reason she was doing this.

Neither of those reasons were.

Leia, as much as she wanted to be, wasn't ruthlessly analytical enough to push aside her personal biases for the former; she certainly wasn't one to sink low enough for the latter.

But she didn't want to think about the real reason. Doubt was a weakness, when it was in oneself or one's allies; it was especially a weakness when it was in one's own beliefs.

Her thumb hovered over the comlink, ready to type in the frequency and make the connection. She must have been sitting here for a solid half hour by now.

Luke was still snoring in the adjacent room, but he would wake soon. Her father was still storming through the Devastator in orbit, but he would return soon. She was running out of time.

If she didn't do this now, she'd never do this at all.

Although her brother was currently ahead of her on that count, Palpatine did not call Leia reckless for no reason. Before she knew it she'd typed in the frequency, and watched the comlink buzz with a detached sense of horror.

She could always hang up, she decided. Besides, who knew if Sabé would even answer—

"Tsabin."

So much for that hope.

Leia was silent for another few breaths—long enough for Sabé to deduce, "Leia?"

Well. She was smarter than Leia had given her credit for—or maybe Rebel agents were just used to short and sharp messages, to avoid Imperial detection, rather than several minutes of awkward silence.

". . .yes," Leia ground out finally, figuring that the more she stalled, the more Sabé thought it was her, anyway. She tried to take back control with, "I had some follow-up questions about Padmé Amidala," but her thumb still lingered on the button to disconnect the call. She could stop this at any moment.

But she didn't.

"Hmm," Sabé said, her voice betraying nothing. It both impressed and infuriated Leia at the same time. "Well, I'd be happy to answer any reasonable questions you have." The word reasonable did not get past Leia; clearly if she asked any dangerous questions, Sabé would cut the call just as quickly as Leia could. "Padmé was—"

"This is less about the woman herself," Leia cut her off. She was getting restless, her leg bouncing, foot tapping on the floor. She got to her feet and started pacing her bedroom. Ten paces to the door; eight paces along to the refresher; six paces along the wall on the way back. "More about the Republic. Obviously I was not alive at this time, and information about that government is. . . limited," censored, and even if Leia did have the clearance to get past it, it had a heavy pro-Imperial slant anyway, "so I'd like to know more."

Sabé's voice was as calm as Senator Amidala's was in everything Leia had read or researched on her. "What would you like to know?"

Leia hesitated. "The Senate," she said finally. "How did they avoid corruption?" Or did they, at all? "Even in the Empire today, there are still corrupt governors and selfish, personal power plays, and that's with one man vetting each person he thinks would be best for the job. How did the Republic manage it?" It wasn't like public elections were infallible.

Palpatine had got into power, after all.

"Arguably, the problems with the Empire today are because absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not that Palpatine wasn't corrupt before, but any one person in power will inevitably favour themselves and their own interests—as well as their loved ones'—over other things that may perhaps demand their attention. That's how corrupt people get into power in dictatorships; because they see how they can use it to their advantage, and their actions go ignored so long as they play to what the ruler wants."

"I'm not talking about the flaws of the Empire," Leia snapped, a little too quickly. "That's treason." And this isn't?

But really: she wasn't going to sit here and listen to Sabé insult her ability to lead justly. She was here to listen to logic, not Rebel propaganda.

But. . .

She sighed and observed, "You're saying that people are inherently selfish."

"Everyone has selfishness to them, yes."

"Which is why democracy doesn't work! People can't be relied upon to vote for the good of the whole, instead of the good of themselves!"

"Isn't that better than having one person's selfish views rule a galaxy for two decades? And what evidence do you have that the Republic was so corrupt?"

"They allowed slavery to thrive—"

Sabé almost seemed to laugh at that. "And the Empire has not?"

"It won't in the future," Leia insisted mutinously. "And I think the fact that half the galaxy got so sick of the Republic's hypocrisy and decided to withdraw, causing a galactic civil war the likes of which hadn't been seen for centuries, is pretty damning evidence against the idea that they lacked corruption."

"I'm not saying the Republic wasn't corrupt. But who was it that orchestrated the Clone Wars?"

Leia's thought process ground to a halt at that. Palpatine.

"He— he used previous flaws to his advantage," she argued, "but he couldn't have exacerbated flaws that weren't already there. The Empire is the best way—just not with him at the head of it."

This was reckless, admitting to a near-complete stranger that she disagreed with Palpatine. It wasn't farfetched to extrapolate and assume a coup was in place, and if it got back to Palpatine. . .

But it wasn't like he didn't already know.

"Are you sure?" Sabé pressed. "Because—"

Leia disconnected the call.

Then she screamed.

Pent up rage inside her ripped through the room, rattling the window and stirring Luke from his sleep. A clumsy probe was directed at her; she waved it off. I'm alright.

She just didn't want to argue with Sabé anymore. The woman was too calm, too rational in her arguments, and Leia was still wracked with self-doubt.

It occurred to her, staring at the comlink in her hand, that she'd never received an answer to her question.

Despite Leia's insistence that she was alright, the fact that she'd lost control enough to actually wake him was a sign she really wasn't. But Luke wasn't going to press.

She wasn't pressing him for the details she so desperately wanted, after all.

So he just sighed, and rolled over in bed, eyes still drooping closed. He knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep again—Leia was still a storm in human form in the adjacent room—so he didn't bother, and dragged himself to his feet.

He'd been napping a lot more than usual lately, but he was tired. Loyalty crises could do that to a person.

Coruscant twinkled at night, and Luke had always found it soothing to just stand out on the balcony in the relative quiet of darkness and watch the speeders zoom by. He remembered when he'd first come to this planet, ten years old and used to nothing but the isolation of Mustafar—and, presumably, Tatooine. It had felt like stepping into an echo chamber where all anyone could do was scream.

Eventually, Luke had learnt to shut out the thoughts of all the millions of beings who called Coruscant home, and shut out His Imperial Majesty right along with them. But night was still calming for him: as little as Coruscant ever slept, it was still a damn sight calmer than the day.

He lazily sank into the Force. Leia was a whirlwind behind him, as always. His father still loomed like a larger-than-life mynock on the Devastator in orbit, on the other side of the planet. Palpatine was meditating in the Palace, but his attention wasn't directed towards Luke in any way. No one else was worth identifying; Luke just closed his eyes, losing himself in the rush and lull of the Force, ebbs and swirls, the light and the dark and—

The light.

His eyes flew open; he immediately scanned the buildings around him. There was a smudge of white on the landing pad opposite him that he was fairly sure wasn't supposed to be there. It was of a humanoid shape.

Another flash—there! That was definitely it. Someone who shone in the Force like a Jedi; they'd dropped their shields long enough for him to sense their presence, then ramped them back up again before he could sense much more than that.

He tentatively reached out to Leia behind him. She remained antsy, infuriated, on edge. She likely hadn't noticed.

But he had.

He reached for his lightsaber, the grip solid and comfortable in his hand. He allowed a small smile to curl his lips. Hunting a Jedi through Coruscant would be exactly what he needed right now, an escape from the doubts plaguing him. Maybe he should get Leia in on it; they could collaborate, make it a sport and regain some of the camaraderie they seemed to have lost—

The cool touch of the Jedi's mind against his. The words were barely whispered, but they stalled any thoughts in their tracks.

Amidala sends her regards, Luke Skywalker.

He froze.

His heart beat faster, and faster, and faster. Force. Oh Force, he knew he'd been stupid to say that to Wren and her defectors; of course this was happening, what else had he thought? Of course they'd want to assess him, and what?

Turn him?

Did they think he was interested in defecting?

No. The thought had genuinely never even crossed his mind; his place was here. At the head of the Empire. This Jedi was gravely mistaken if they thought he was interested in having any sort of conversation with them or Amidala?

Even if she's your mother?

Luke pushed the thought away. It didn't matter. He wouldn't talk to the Jedi.

But. . .

What harm would it do? If he was so certain that he wouldn't be swayed, then he ought to lead the Jedi on, talk to them, get as much information from them as possible. . . then kill them. That was what his kind did to Jedi.

His kind. Luke snorted. As if he and Leia had a kind.

But talking to the Jedi wouldn't hurt. As far as he knew, it could either be Bridger, Jarrus or Tano. He could take the first two in a fight easily enough—his father was fiercely proud of it, and said so, though that meant less to Luke now than it used to. He wasn't sure how well he could fight Tano, but he was sure he could hold her off until Leia arrived with backup.

Who are you? Luke asked, just in case.

No reply.

Luke huffed. Well. Alright then.

He made for the landing pad, assuring Leia that he'd be back soon when she shot him a questioning probe. Then he took off in the speeder and brought it around to the landing pad he'd seen the Jedi on.

He didn't know which senator or governor or other member of the elite owned this particular starscraper, but its lights were dark, with no one to be sensed inside. There were no security sensors either; the only sound to be heard after he disembarked was his own footsteps.

He could sense the Jedi somewhere down, on his left. He squinted, pulling on the dark side to enhance his vision and awareness, then spotted it: a maintenance walkway wrapped around the side of the building. There were no landing pads nearby, but steel struts expanded out from the skyscraper's main body a few levels below him, where the prestigious, coveted residences gave way to the sort of abandoned building works that were everywhere on Coruscant.

A planet of ghosts, he thought.

Then he shook the thought away, pulled on the Force again, and jumped.

He landed squarely on one of the steel beams criss-crossing between the buildings. It rang underneath him; for one moment he was staring over the edge, straight down, Coruscant's five thousand levels dropping away below him. It was always dizzying when that happened.

Then he reminded himself there was still a Jedi in his vicinity. He rolled to his feet, and jumped again.

He landed on the next strut a little less elegantly. He rolled, pulling feverishly on the Force to minimise damage, but his knees still got banged up pretty badly. He settled for a few muttered curses.

He got to his feet again.

His two massive jumps had covered the distance more than effectively. He was in line with the Jedi now, standing on a strut that hugged the building opposite the Jedi's, and could make out their silhouette across the gap, though they still wore a dark enough robe for it to be a challenge.

They stood for a moment, staring at each other across the gap.

It was like a scene out of a painting: one figure standing in shade, one in Coruscant's nighttime glow. Luke had no doubt his black outfit would have blended into the shadows just as effectively as her robe did, but he wasn't wearing a hood.

As it was, he stood near a street lamp. The yellow light bled strange patterns onto the metal he stood on; it gleamed off his hair like a beacon. The Jedi could see every inch of him clearly, while he could only make out a vague shape of them.

Strange. In this painting, the one who stood in the light was the furthest from it, while the one who stood in the shadows had no fear of the dark.

Once it became clear Luke wouldn't come any closer if he didn't know what he was getting into, the Jedi's Force sense became almost. . . amused.

If you insist, they acquiesced, and lowered their hood.

Luke squinted, watching white montrals emerge, then a brown-orange face, until he was certain it was a Togruta standing all those metres in front of him. There was another few moments as he automatically categorised other pertinent details about the figure—their height, their age, the twin lightsabers he could see at their belt—but logically he already knew those things. He knew exactly who this was.

Of the few Jedi still alive, how many of them were Togruta, after all?

Ahsoka Tano grinned and shouted, "So? Are you coming over here?"

Yes. Yes, if only because it might give him a chance to fight and maybe even capture one of the few Rebels he'd heard his father rant about so much, who his father despised with everything in himself, a person whose capture would make his father proud—

No.

Making his father proud wasn't his priority, anymore.

And even if he did capture her, what then? What was to stop her from spilling the truth of what Luke had done at Skystrike, and leave him to face Palpatine's wrath for his treason?

Because it had been treason. Luke accepted that now. It was hardly the first treasonous thing he'd done in the past few months.

He eyed the jump, and took a few steps back. He'd never managed to jump the distance of one Coruscant building to another—at least, not in Imperial City. In some of the industrial districts the buildings were more cramped together, and he could play hopscotch with them there, but here. . .

It was a manageable distance, he decided. Especially with the steel strut giving him a running start.

He took a few steps back, and made the jump.

He'd been wrong.

The jump was still too short. The moment he noticed he panicked, more thoughts than there were levels below him flashing through his mind in an instant—

He searched for a place to catch himself, something to hang onto—there, a rickety ramp; there, a possible handhold in a beam, but at this speed he'd tear his arms out of their sockets—

He slowed in mid air. The cool touch of the Force made him roll his eyes.

Of course.

Tano's hands were out, her brows furrowed in concentration. She brought him over the safety railings around the walkway, and set him down gently.

He got to his feet as quickly as possible and folded his arms across his chest, desperately trying not to flush. This. . . was not how he'd wanted it to go.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Ahsoka Tano."

She only smiled. "Luke Skywalker." Something about the way she said it felt like destiny. Like she'd been waiting for this for a long time.

She eyed the strut he'd just jumped from, then flicked her gaze back to him. "Well, you're certainly as reckless as Anakin once was."

There was so much to unpack in that sentence—someone actually using his father's name, the familiarity she said it with—but what he snapped was, "Don't compare me to him."

She appeared. . . taken aback. . . by that. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realise you hated him."

"I don't!" His tone was only getting angrier, and the dark side responded to it. It swirled at his heels, dragged the temperature around them down to a nipping cold. Goosebumps rose on his arms.

Tano held her hands up, and he didn't think he was imagining the worry in her voice as she said, "Alright. I'm sorry for assuming anything." She dropped her hands and observed him for a minute. "You're. . . darker than I thought. You felt lighter earlier."

"I am not light."

"Do you love your sister?"

He scoffed, disgusted with this. "Of course I do, Jedi scum. That's none of your—"

"Not a Jedi."

He blinked. "What?"

"I'm not a Jedi. I'd have thought you would know that," she smiled, somewhat wryly, "I told your father in no uncertain terms. Pretty dramatically, I might add."

"I don't care," he said. He had known that, and now he berated himself for his slip—hadn't he debated throwing that in Wren's face only a few days ago? "Stay out of my family business."

After a moment, he processed that this woman had just saved his life, so maybe it would just be civil to—

"I'm not gonna collect the debt, Luke, don't worry." He scowled—he doubted she'd read his thoughts, so the fact that he'd lost control of his facial expression, or become so predictable, was an undesirable one.

"And as for your family business. . ." she trailed off, looking at him hard. "Your mother sent me to talk to you. You contacted her, after all."

He half-turned away, arms still folded stubbornly. "That was nothing. I'm not gonna. . . defect, or whatever you hope will come from this. I'm not even thinking about it."

"You committed treason by letting those pilots go."

"I was doing the only right thing. They didn't want to stay in the navy under corrupt officials who ordered them to break Imperial protocol. They can go fight a doomed cause if they really want, and when they get caught on an unarmed vessel and don't get fired on, as per Imperial protocol, they'll realise the truth, and be forced to live with the burden of what they've done."

"And what have they done?"

He fidgeted. "Turned their lasers on the best government this galaxy has seen."

"You don't believe that."

"The best form of government," he continued stubbornly. "Palpatine is a fluke."

"And you think the galaxy would be better off without him?"

He paused, but— "Of course."

"The Rebellion—"

"No."

To his surprise, she laughed. "Well, I can't say I wasn't hoping. But I'm not surprised."

He dropped his arms from across his chest and just fiddled with a loose thread at the edge of his sleeve. "Why did you come here, Tano?"

"You contacted us."

"That was an experiment."

"To see if Amidala was who you thought she was?" Tano tilted her head. "She is."

"Padmé Amidala?"

"Your mother."

All the breath left him. He known—at least, he'd thought that he'd known—but hearing it out loud like that. . . "You know we've been hunting for this sort of information for years."

"And what are you gonna do with it now?" She smirked a little. "Go to Palpatine?"

Luke said nothing.

After the silence got unbearable, he sighed. "You never told me what you wanted."

"I told you, I was sent here."

"What does Amidala want, then?"

"She wants to know her son."

The words were quiet, but Luke flinched anyway.

"Then why didn't she come herself?" he challenged. His hands trembled; he clenched them into fists at his sides.

Ahsoka folded her arms. "The leader of the Rebellion, coming to the very heart of the Empire? You know exactly why." Her voice softened again. "But she still wants to meet you and your sister."

"Then why did she dump us on Tatooine when we were born?" The words were harsh; they ripped out of his throat with little input from his actual mind. "It didn't exactly look like she wanted to play happy families when she left us to rot in poverty, did it?"

Ahsoka hesitated, at that. "You remember Tatooine? We were under the impression you didn't."

"As of a few weeks ago," he ground out, resolutely ignoring the implication that they'd been watching them for a while now, maybe his entire life, "I do." I gave Wren the name Luke Skywalker for a reason.

Before she could analyse it in any more detail, he pushed on, "So she didn't want us when we needed her, but the moment we don't, she tries to waltz right back in?"

"There were. . . extenuating circumstances when you were born—"

Luke turned away before she could finish.

"She wants to know you, Luke," Tano said quietly. "She didn't get to be there during your childhood, and she wants to know the person you've become."

Luke laughed.

It sounded ugly, even to his own ears. He took two sharp steps away from Tano and yanked his lightsaber off his belt, lighting it in one fluid motion. The crimson blade always seemed to hum more angrily than Jedi lightsabers; it cast his face in red light.

He said, "I doubt very much she wants to know the person I've become."