With Leia's newfound memories, she knew that when she'd lived on Tatooine, there had been time where she'd woken up on her birthday and made it all the way into the kitchen before she saw the two small piles of presents on the table, and remembered.
She'd done that occasionally on Mustafar as well, she knew, but it had been rarer. Her father had trained them both so thoroughly with the Force that she never failed to wake up and notice his overwhelming presence wasn't there—gone as of a few days beforehand, ordered by an Emperor she'd never met to attend him and his Empire Day instead of his children on their birthday.
But ever since she'd first arrived on Coruscant, it was impossible to forget.
The alarm woke her up early, as it always did; she groaned, as she always did. The first thing she was aware of was Luke, shifting in the bed above her. Then she focused, and everything made sense.
Kuat. Empire Day. Eighteenth birthday.
She pulled a face that was half-grin, half-grimace. Well, at least she was legally an adult now.
And after they'd attended the obligatory speech Palpatine would make at the official unveiling of the Executor, and then sat through an hour or two of a banquet, they'd have the entire evening to themselves. Their father always gave them presents.
But, in truth, Leia disliked Empire Day.
She didn't hate it. It was, after all, her birthday, and the day the Empire she served had been founded. But she disliked it, if only because of the pain she knew it brought her father.
Her mother had died on this day—
Except no.
She hadn't.
And, reaching out to find her father, the indigo storm of grief and rage he always was today, she had the overwhelming urge to tell him.
She didn't.
Instead, she drew back into herself, and got dressed.
If there was one thing Luke hated about Empire Day the most, it was the speeches.
He was not a politician. He couldn't sit through hours and hours of one or two people talking and saying essentially the same thing—or nothing at all. He'd sat in enough lessons alongside Leia to know what they were talking about, and why, but he had never been taught to her level for a reason. He hated this.
Palpatine's speech was something about how the Empire was now an adult. He was discussing all the great beings who'd helped him to raise it to maturity—with an honorary jab at the lovely Padmé Amidala, whose name is being vilified by terrorists—but to be entirely honest, Luke had stopped listening in the seventeenth minute.
He amused himself instead by seeing how many politicians he could torment. Using the Force to give them slight headaches, or itches, or the urge to sneeze, then watching their faces contort as they tried not to interrupt the speech, was vastly entertaining.
Leia gave him a look at one point, but when he grinned at her, she grinned back.
The unveiling of the Executor caught his attention as well, but only because she was still a magnificent ship. Her representation of a new direction and capability in their adult Empire didn't matter to him at all.
What seemed like an eternity later, they finally started the banquet. It was still awkward—Luke was wedged between his father and his sister, and his father couldn't eat—but at least he could talk to Leia. She always made wickedly accurate jibes about politicians.
Of course, Palpatine was on his father's left, and could probably hear every word, but he seemed more amused than anything.
So the banquet passed quickly enough as well. Luke had just excused himself to visit the refresher shortly before dessert, when he met someone in the corridor.
She was waiting for him, that much was clear. She was there when he exited the refresher, leaning against the wall in a position that would have looked casual, had she not been so stiff.
Her helmet hissed open when he stopped, surprised.
"J— Sixth Sister," he said.
She nodded. She didn't greet him back—calling him Luke seemed too intimate, and there was no other name she knew of to call him—but she surprised him anyway. "I wanted to thank you."
The words were stiff as well. Luke wasn't surprised at that. It was the only thing he wasn't baffled at.
"Thank me?" he asked, confused.
Jade nodded. "Palpatine put Thrawn on Amidala's case instead Phoenix Squadron's," she said, "on your suggestion. He's started the hunt, and we've started to turn in results. We've hunted their base down, and we're confident that we'll find it within a few weeks, thanks to your information. So thank you."
Luke wondered when she had ever been taught to thank anyone. Perhaps, in his attempt to seem like someone she could trust somewhat, he'd overshot it a bit.
Maybe she thought they were allies. If not. . . friends.
Luke didn't find the idea all that appalling. Almost appealing, in fact. He was well aware that he knew no one his age except Leia, and perhaps it might be. . . beneficial.
His father would disagree, but he and his father disagreed on a lot of things, nowadays.
So Luke just smiled slightly, and started walking back to the banquet. "You're welcome."
The banquet went slowly for Leia, but eventually it was over with. For a moment, it looked like Palpatine was going to make them stay for the after-speech (and the speech after that, and the speech after that) but in the end, Luke and Leia were allowed to leave, and only their father had to stay.
After all, the after-speech was the one that would get broadcast to the entire galaxy. And while Vader was the Emperor's right hand, the symbol of security and strength for the Empire, his visage respected and feared in equal measures. . . Luke and Leia's faces were not supposed to be such public knowledge.
It was the reason there hadn't been a public announcement beyond a quiet introduction to court for them; no one outside of the Empire's elite—no one unimportant—could be expected to know that Leia was the heir, or that they were both already respected as Imperial agents. Their father said it was to avoid assassination attempts, especially after the one when they were ten years old. The court gossip had been bad, and some trigger-happy Rebels had decided to take out any future Sith Lords before they did any damage.
They had failed, and their allies had suffered for it.
Logically, it made sense. But with everything she knew now, Leia couldn't help but theorise if there was another reason: if their father hadn't wanted anyone who had been implicit in their kidnapping to have any sort of access to them.
Leia couldn't blame him for that. She just blamed him for not telling her the truth.
And she blamed him for nightmares of the cries of her aunt and uncle as he cut through them like crops.
So she felt no guilt whatsoever about linking arms with Luke and fleeing the Executor, leaving him to the mercy of the politicians.
He summoned them to his quarters on the Devastator a few hours later, his begrudging amusement clear through the Force. And even that was minimal: he was, above all else, excited. It was their birthday.
There was sadness—there was always sadness, on this day—but he was pushing it aside.
"How was the speech, Father?" Luke asked sweetly. His hyperbaric chamber was open; he ducked inside, and grinned at his unmasked face.
Vader rolled his eyes. Funny—now that Luke had seen the holos of Anakin Skywalker before the suit, he could genuinely see the resemblance, and not just because of the scar over his right eye.
"Insufferable, as always," Vader said as Leia entered, and the pod sealed behind her. "We should remove him just so I never have to sit through another speech like that again."
"I'll be sure to be more succinct about it, don't worry." Leia smiled, but it lacked that wicked edge she sported so often. She was, after all, seventeen—eighteen, now. She still had a certain childishness to her.
Vader grumbled, "See that you do," but moved on quickly. He didn't want to talk about Palpatine.
He handed them both a soft, flexible package. "Here."
Luke raised an eyebrow at his present. "Wow, I wonder what it is."
"I maintain the hope that you will actually wear them, someday."
"Fine, Father," Leia capitulated. She'd already ripped hers open, and swung the indigo cape round her shoulders. Luke had to admit, it looked nice. The silver embroidery was subtle, but stylish, and one could never tell just by looking at it that it was armorweave, fireproof, and all the other things his father's capes were. "We'll wear them at this fancy unveiling of Project Stardust tomorrow."
Luke nodded his agreement absently, taking more time to study his. The fabric was heavy, but it was a comfortable weight; he took a moment to study the embroidery.
Silver threads picked out against an indigo background. He frowned, studying the pattern of pinpricks carefully. It almost looked like. . .
"The Naboo and Tatooine systems," he said aloud.
His father nodded, almost sheepishly—self-conscious. His uncertainty was obvious on his face, without the mask. "Your mother's homeworld," he admitted, "and yours."
Well. At least he was being honest about it now.
Luke shook the thought away—it was uncharacteristically, not to mention worryingly, bitter—and shrugged the cape on himself, as Leia had. It took him a moment to fiddle with the silver chain at his neck, but once he'd done it the cape settled into place.
He really should wear his father's capes more often. They were, despite everything he'd ever said about them, very comfortable.
"You look dashing," Leia drawled.
He affected a small bow. "As do you, darling sister."
His father said smugly, "That is only the first part of your gift."
They turned to him in unison. "Oh?"
"You have both expressed interested in Grand Admiral Thrawn's TIE Defender program," he said, nodding at Luke, "and you gained yourself a respectful ally in Thrawn when you recommended him to Palpatine. His program is based on Lothal, but he has a few prototypes here for a demonstration to the Empire, and he has agreed that you may take them for a test run."
Luke was frozen. He exchanged a look with Leia, twin grins growing on their faces. "When?"
His father smiled softly, then summoned his mask to hand and put it on. "Now."
Grand Admiral Thrawn's TIE Defender program was unique in more ways than one. One only had to glance at the fighter to spot the first, and the others were obvious the moment one stepped inside the cockpit.
Mainly because it was as cramped as the inside of Palpatine's bank account.
Leia didn't care.
She knew that the general belief among the elite was that her brother and father were the military types; she turned her formidable Sith magic, supposedly, to terrorising the court, Senate, and any unfortunate officers who had to deal with her.
As was so common when it came to the demon twins, the general belief was wrong.
She had a head for military matters the same way Luke had a head for politics: when it was necessary. The fact that their respective educations had diverged didn't mean they hadn't once run side-by-side—and it didn't mean that each one's knowledge of the other's area wasn't intense, detailed and, above all, thorough.
Leia loved ships. She was a fantastic pilot. Always had been.
She suspected what she remembered from Tatooine—particularly its inherently stifling nature—might have had something to do with it.
Leia loved ships. And she especially loved Thrawn's TIE Defender.
It looked. . . not ungainly; unpleasant. But unpleasant in the way that a sando aqua monster looked unpleasant: its many limbs seemed inelegant until they killed, and then they became something like fascinating to watch.
The Defender's killer limbs were three: three jagged panels instead of the usual two, twisted and warped into vicious triangles. They were further away from the body of the fighter as well, the cockpit a single glaring eye amidst the. . . claws.
Leia decided to give it a rest with the monster imagery. It might give her nightmares.
But being inside it, feeling all of that monstrous power and speed at her fingertips and using it, shooting out of the hangar on her brother's tail, firing a salvo of shots into empty space and watching the lime starbursts briefly outshine the stars themselves. . .
"You coming or what?"
The comms crackled and she grinned to herself, watching Luke's Defender shoot forward on her left and set off his own celebratory fireworks.
"Happy Birthday, idiot," she said fondly. Though she couldn't see his face, she felt him smiling.
"Happy Birthday to you too," he drawled in reply, looping back round behind her. Her fighter rocked as something collided with her shields. "Watch your back."
"I thought that was your job, you traitor," she groused—then froze.
He'd been shocked to silence as well, a deep. . . discomfort radiating across the comms—
"Power has been bled from your lasers."
Her father's amused bass tone interrupted the moment. He didn't seem to have picked up on the tension—or maybe he interpreted it as one of the many inside jokes he'd never understand. He just saw their antics.
"So I can shoot at Leia without worrying about sororicide?" Her Defender rocked again; she seized the controls and rolled away from his fire, the Force blaring around her. A part of her—hell, all of her—delighted in the speed and smoothness of the movement. "Great."
"You'll have to catch me first."
"I thought I just did."
She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, then bared them in a grin. "Not again you won't."
She shot forward, Luke hot on her heels.
She could sense her father following as well, but he wasn't participating in the play-dogfight just yet; they knew he'd wipe them both away within minutes.
Perhaps later they'd team up against him. Fly as wing mates, feel their minds merge together as one in a way they hadn't in far, far too long. But not now.
Now, keeping her mind connected to the Force but separate from her brother's was the only way she was going to win this.
They shot right the way around the dozens of construction sites on and near the planet. This was the way to view the wonders the Empire's greatest supplier held: firsthand, passing by, under and through the massive skeletons being constructed, inside one of the wonders themselves.
Though, Luke supposed, the Defender wasn't Kuat's achievement. It was Lothal's; he knew Pryce and Thrawn had worked very hard to keep Phoenix Squadron and the Spectres from learning of and ending such a lucrative, successful project.
Despite himself, he started thinking of Jade, of her forays into hunting them. Of his father, who'd failed—failed—so utterly on Malachor, and the showdown there.
Of Sabine Wren. Of Biggs, Wedge and Hobbie, who'd undoubtedly found their place in Phoenix Squadron itself.
Leia's shots splashed against his shields. He banked hard to the left, and dispelled his thoughts.
"We're coming up on the Chimaera," he said aloud. Thrawn's flagship was just visible beyond the skeletal Star Destroyer they were passing in construction.
Leia's voice had a grin in it—they could both sense that alien mind, intense with clarity, observing them from the Chimaera's bridge.
"Well then," she said. "We'd better show him just how good his prototype starfighters are, hadn't we?"
Luke made to corkscrew and fire on her in response, but a nudge from the Force had him keep rolling. Bright bolts sailed just past him, sizzling his shields. In his peripheral vision, he saw Leia dive as well.
His father swooped in, his Defender's three wings like the clawed hand-shape he made when choking someone. Luke and Leia scattered.
He instinctively reached for his sister, their minds entwining. Plans, manoeuvres, back up plans flashed up and were instantly dismissed or ratified; their flight patterns switched from combatant to wingmen in an instant; they turned to face their father, grins tugging at their lips and exhilaration coursing through their veins.
Thrawn's satisfaction in the performance of the fighters couldn't hope to outstrip their own.