A/N: I'm running out of content to consume! I've finished Rebels, I've watched Rogue One, and I've finally watched the originals. Guess I'll have to create more for myself (please don't trigger George Lucas to hunt me down, I've already put the disclaimer in the first chapter).

I initially intended to upload this chapter last week, but as my cursor was hovering above the 'Post New Chapter' button, I was like, nah. I killed my darling and rewrote a completely new one. Here is my new darling.

"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." — Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Chapter II

The Disturbance

Sweat is dribbling down her neck and plastering her hair to her head. The muscles of her arms are seizing in pain — but she keeps the pressure on them, one straining to keep her balanced, the other reaching further. Her fingertips graze the rough surface of the rock she's draped over. It's digging into her ribcage, but she ignores it. Just a little further and she'll be able to reach it…

A droplet of sweat clambers down a strand of her hair; her eyes shift towards it, watching it quivering in the sunlight. It will perish like her enemy. Smirking, she blows her strand of hair out of her face. The droplet slips and crashes onto the rock. She returns her attention to the handle of the blaster pistol wedged into the crevice of the rock. To anyone, it would be unreachable. That's certainly what her enemy thought when they disarmed her. Still smirking, Leia closes her eyes and breathes deeply, raising her hands from the rock's surface. She's balancing precariously on her stomach, but the blaster just needs an exterior pull to land in her waiting palms —

"Leia!" As if it was the Force that knocks her balance, she jolts right off the rock. She crashes onto the ground below in an ungracefully tangled heap, wincing at the sudden stinging of her palms. The sand puffs out in the disturbance she'd caused it. Through squinted eyes, she watches as the short yet intimidating figure of Aunt Beru approaches her in the cloud of sand and dust.

With a gasp, Leia glances at the basket she'd abandoned at the base of the rock. It's still empty. Leia becomes acutely aware of the unanimous chirping of the zicx bugs that echo over the desert. Judging from the fact that the glare of the twin suns is much harsher since she'd first come out when it was quiet, it's been a while. Uh oh. She stumbles to her feet just as her aunt reaches her. Tatooine is rarely kind to its people, which must be why her aunt looks several years older than she actually is. There are heavy bags under her eyes with matching wrinkles, and she appears to have a permanent frown line on her forehead. Or she's just always frowning at Leia.

"What exactly are you doing?" Aunt Beru's voice cracks through the buzzing of the zicx chirps with the severity of a blade on a crop. Her eyes leave Leia's, and when they narrow she knows that she's had a look at the empty basket, too. When her aunt glares at her, Leia squirms. She blames Anakin (or lack thereof) for her reckless abandon of her spotless reputation, but of course her aunt can't know that.

"Well…" She begins feebly. Aunt Beru puts her hands on her hips. Leia crosses her arms. "I was trying to pick the hubba gourd. You were the one who said the best ones are found in the deepest rock crevices." Leia juts her chin up, giving her an insolent look. She's going to sell me into slavery.

Aunt Beru's frown line deepens and Leia braces herself. "Yes, but not at the cost of our crop yield," she snaps. "Quantity over quality, Leia, I've told you this more times than our suns have orbited this planet." Putting on her blank 'I can't remember that' face, Leia hopes she isn't tempting her luck to flip over. Aunt Beru seems to be in an oddly good mood today. As if to prove her inward point, her aunt sighs and says, "Come on, young lady, pick up that basket. I'll show you what the better looking surface hubba gourds look like."

What's the saying? Don't look a prize bantha in the mouth. Without hesitation, Leia darts to the basket and swipes it up. Her aunt directs her to which rocks she should go for (the ones that have little plant life, which means less competition for the hubba gourd) and points out that the ones that are the purest of orange are the fruit at their ripest. As she does, she indulges Leia in the plan to tame the hubba gourd plants and mass produce them; this means they won't have to rely on the rocks located near their property which is free game to anyone. Meanwhile, Leia sweats profusely under the suns, breathing heavily and scowling at the rock crevices with her switchblade in hand. Hubba gourds are stubbornly rooted to rocks. If Aunt Beru wasn't here she could use the Force to wheedle the stupid fruit out of their crevices.

She doesn't get why Jawas like them so much. They taste awful! Zir had once offered her a slice when she'd disturbed her lunch stop and it took every concentrated effort in Leia not to show pure disgust on her face when she tried it. The only thing that interests her about the fruit is that its stalk looks enough like the handle of a blaster pistol to fuel her imagination.

Something in the air shifts, jolting her out of her thoughts. Aunt Beru doesn't seem to notice, jabbering away about hubba gourds and crop yields. Her heart speeds up — Anakin is finally back! The amount of nights the last few weeks she'd gone back to the N1-Starfighter hoping his blue glow would disrupt the desert's darkness…

Leia hacks at the hubba gourd she'd been struggling with for the past five minutes, her switchblade cutting right through the vine and hitting the rock with a tremoring thwock. The blade snaps in half; Aunt Beru angrily exclaims, "Leia!"; she ignores her, turning around to where she feels she should. Heatwaves make the air simmer, and past their rippling farm a hundred meters away from where they stand, in the distant horizon, a hooded figure approaches. But she can tell it's not glowing blue. Leia frowns in disappointment.

"Finally, Kenobi." Her aunt's mumbled words pique her interest. Leia tilts her head up, noting that Aunt Beru's frown line is much less pronounced.

"Is Obi-Wan visiting?" she pipes up. Her aunt looks down and places a gentle hand on the back of Leia's head. She's in a fantastic mood.

"Come on, little one. It's time for lunch."

By the time they make it to the back door of their farmhouse — Aunt Beru carrying the half-full basket of hubba gourds — Obi-Wan's figure hasn't made it that far. Leia's sweating just looking at him.

"Aunt Beru, why's he walking?" She doesn't answer and ushers her into the much cooler house, but Leia swears she murmurs something that sounded like 'because he's Kenobi'. She's in their dining unit before she can blink, where Uncle Owen is setting the table. He looks up at the scuffle by the door, and he seems to see something in her aunt's face because he goes rigid.

"He's coming?"

"Yes."

Uncle Owen nods, then approaches the doorway Leia is blocking. She listens as Aunt Beru moves away and starts bustling around in the kitchen. Leia only now registers the scent of nausage and dustcrepes, and her mouth waters. Her uncle looks down at her and smiles. "How are you doing, Kiddo?"

"She broke our switchblade," Aunt Beru calls from the kitchen before she can even open her mouth. Leia scowls. Uncle Owen sighs exasperatedly.

"Another one?" She shrugs. "Tell me," and she scowls heavier, expecting another one of his random 'quiz' questions, "what happens if you try to bite into a black melon?"

Leia grins. "You break your teeth."

"Then don't bite." He ruffles her hair and Leia moves to the side, watching him step forward. As he leaves through the doorway, he looks over his shoulder and says, "Take a seat, Kiddo. Lunch is ready." He pauses, a small smirk hidden in his beard. "It'll taste much better than Aunt Beru's!" he whispers theatrically, and Leia giggles.

"What are you two talking about?" Aunt Beru snaps.

Uncle Owen snorts and moves out of Leia's sight. She takes a seat at the middle of the table, noting there are only three plates. "Are you going to get Obi-Wan's plate?" she calls.

"Obi-Wan's not staying," her uncle calls back from the kitchen. Twenty minutes later, Leia is sitting alone in the enclosed dining unit staring at the only full plate in the room while she listens to Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's muffled arguing outside the house. Obi-Wan's distinctively nasal voice had talked so little she wouldn't have known he was even here if she hadn't been attentively listening. Though the air is strange, strange like it was when she was with Anakin and she's sure now more than ever that it must be the Force.

Leia had picked up particularly loud words like 'water', 'yield' and 'Tuskens', mostly coming from Aunt Beru. Then there was a point she had screeched, "Leia!" She had immediately jumped up from her chair, wondering if it was worth slipping out the back door to escape whatever scolding she had for whatever it was she did wrong now. But when her aunt didn't call again, and when nobody came into the house, she realized her name had come up in the conversation with Obi-Wan.

Leia's hungered curiosity overrides her hunger for nausage and dustcrepes. She pads over to the closed door of the dining unit and cracks it open. Peering past its rim, she catches sight of the three silhouettes in the curtain beside the front door. The curtain flutters which means the window must be open. Leia smirks.

"I cannot begin to express how important this is," Obi-Wan says in his strange accent. There is a sense of urgency in his voice. "The younger she's trained, the more chance—"

"No." Leia shrinks back against the doorframe. The only time she's heard Uncle Owen sounding like that was the day he'd seen her use the Force. "You're not training her at any age, Obi-Wan." She hears Aunt Beru grunting in agreement. "I don't care about your destinies or your prophecies, all of that is utter karking druk—" Leia claps her hands over her mouth to muffle her snort, and she's sure Aunt Beru is giving him a filthy look right now "—if you ask me. Only my wife and I say what her future will be like. And what we have always said to you is that she will have nothing to do with your lot. The only reason we allow you around here is in the interest of business. Do you understand me now, or will this be a recurring establishment?"

"Owen—" Obi-Wan begins, but he is cut off again by her uncle.

"Haven't you murdered enough Skywalkers already, Kenobi?"

Leia frowns, all amusement lost. Clicking the door closed behind her, she moves back to her chair in the dining unit. She sits and prods at her food with her fork without any intention to eat it. Not long after, her aunt and uncle enter the house and join her in the dining unit. They eat in somber silence; Aunt Beru's frown line is deep again; Uncle Owen's hands are shaking as he grips his cutlery. For the most of it, Leia stares glumly down at her plate.

Uncle Owen had told her that her parents died in a mining accident, not by the hand of the Force-wielding traveler who they do business with.

/-|-\

\-|-/

She slips out into the desert the minute the light in her aunt and uncle's room goes out. Zir hadn't passed their farm at all today, so she had nobody to talk to. Leia lingers for a moment by her home, clinging onto a small hope that warms her in the night's chill. She heads north-west, making the three-hundred meter trek.

When she spots the rusty old N1-Starfighter on the horizon, she has to blink a few times to make sure she isn't imagining the faint flickering blue in the shadows. As her heart speeds up, so does her feet. The blue gets stronger and stronger; grinning, Leia bursts into a sprint, her hair whipping at her ears.

She grabs the jagged side of one of the gaping holes in the ship, and swerves into its belly. Anakin stands in the center with his hands clasped behind his back. He's staring at the ground, but when she clears her throat his eyes raise. For a moment he looks angry and she wonders if she had interrupted him in something, but then he smiles and his hard-edged face softens.

"Where were you?" she demands, putting her hands on her hips.

"Nowhere interesting," he answers, his smile going toothy. Leia rolls her eyes but her grin doesn't fade. "Now let's begin with your training." Her stomach flops as she darts further into the ship.

"Pick it up," Anakin says, nodding down. Leia's eyes follow the direction, and land on a small rock glowing blue under his light. Easy! She raises her arm so her hand is hovering above the rock; it zooms up towards her palm — she frowns when it suddenly stops mid-air, and then it is plummeting back to the ground. Looking up, she notices that Anakin's gloved hand is joining his other one by his sides. "Pick it up," he says again.

Leia frowns. "I did."

"Then do it again."

Leia obeys with her gift; Anakin uses the Force to push the rock back down again.

"Pick it up." This is stupid, Leia thinks. She scowls heavily in the gloom, wondering what in the galaxy Anakin thinks using the Force means — because she certainly doesn't know. "Pick it up," he repeats, firmly, his expression blank.

Leia stares down towards the object of interest on the spot of sand. The rock in question is just touching the tips of her boots. He wants her to physically pick it up. Well, what's the point in that? It's a valid question that she repeats aloud.

Anakin merely clasps his hands behind his back, and says nothing. Setting her jaw, Leia considers just turning around and making her trek back to the farm. Then she thinks of Uncle Owen and her mood darkens. Leia concentrates on the N1-Starfighter and Anakin with his infuriatingly blank expression.

It's just so stupid! She's supposed to refine her use of the Force… to understand her gift… and he's making her pick up a rock. She's already done that countless times — with the Force, no less

"I will wait here all night," Anakin states, "even if you may not." She watches incredulously as he lowers himself, his back straight, to sit on the jagged base of the ship, crossing his legs, and closing his eyes. He glows an ethereal blue in the dark. For a moment, her feet poise to set off back home. But then her stomach twists at the thought that if she walks away now, Anakin might not ever seek her out again. Grumbling briefly, Leia flops down to the ground much less gracefully. She glares at the rock and makes no move to grab it. Anakin's blue glow dances over its jagged surface.

The desert is especially quiet tonight. The silence rings in her ears. At least she remembered to bring warmer clothes. Leia looks down to her brown robe sewn by the harvested fur of their own banthas, and plucks at a stray thread on her sleeve without touching it. "You are stubborn, child." Leia nearly jumps. She looks up, but Anakin's eyes are still closed.

"How did you know?"

The corners of his lips twitch upward. "That you used the Force or that you are stubborn?"

Leia glowers at his unseeing self. "The first one."

"I could feel it," he replies simply. For once, she actually understands one of his vague answers. After all, she can feel who actually has the Force. She suspects practice will allow her to feel more — assuming Anakin will actually let her practice anything. Leia's eyes drop back down to the rock.

They lapse into silence again, which is both boring and uncomfortable, so Leia pipes up, "What else can you feel?" She pauses, brows furrowing. "I mean, is there anything else to feel? Can you even…" she wrinkles her nose, brows drawing closer, "describe it?"

"There are many things you can feel with the Force, although there are too many to describe now." She would have scowled if he didn't continue talking. "But what you should understand is that each Force-sensitive being has their own signature Force." Leia tilts her head.

"So you can recognize someone just based on feeling their Force?"

Anakin nods, his eyes still closed. She closes her eyes, too, and tries to gauge what his Force feels like. He chuckles quietly and she believes it's because he knows what she's attempting. Leia ignores him, concentrating harder. She reaches out to the foreign Force she can feel around her. The serene air fades; the silence is sucked up by a vacuum of crackling lightning and roaring fire. If she stays too long she'll surely burn alive.

Leia's eyes snap open with a gasp. Anakin is staring at her, a strange look on his face — almost the same as the expression on Uncle Owen's face the one and only time he'd witnessed her using the Force. She wonders if Anakin would go mad like her uncle had. An unbidden flicker of fear licks her heart, because if that's what Anakin's Force feels like she dreads to think what his anger looks like.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. His expression softens.

"For what?"

"For…" She trails off, eyeing him simultaneously sheepishly and apprehensively. She doesn't want to talk about her uncle's outburst. She doesn't really want to talk about her uncle at all. She doesn't even want to think of him. "I just am," she grumbles, and Anakin hums with a faint smile. He closes his eyes again. Leia shifts slightly, shaking her left foot to get rid of the numbness. She hadn't realized how long she'd been sitting still.

"That was very impressive, Leia. It takes a lot of trained focus to read the Force." Despite everything, she can't help but blush with the praise. Her eyes drop to her lap as she bows her head slightly. "But you still lack discipline." She glances up at him again with a raised brow. His expression remains blank as his eyelashes whisper against his cheeks. Then her eyes fall back to the rock, lying between them.

Discipline. That's what he's trying to teach her. But how does discipline relate to picking up a rock? It makes Leia wonder how he got trained in the Force. A question forms in her head and the longer she stares at the rock, the more she wants to ask it.

"Who trained you?" Leia blurts, her eyes raising. There's a spike in the Force around her. It raises gooseflesh across her arms. However, his expression remains blank and she expects him either to give her a vague answer or to not answer at all. As the silence stretches, she figures that she's right. Then —

"A few people did. But the one who even allowed it to happen was a Jedi Master of the Order." She wrinkles her nose because she doesn't understand a single thing that he just said. "He was the kindest and wisest Jedi I knew. The kindest and wisest man I knew..." He sighs. "A man I wish I could have been like." Leia mulls over this. She can sense something in the air that makes her chest pang, and immediately she knows it comes from Anakin. So the man is no longer with them.

Feeling remorseful for bringing the topic up, Leia diverts with, "What is a Jedi Master?"

His brows furrow slightly. "A high ranking Jedi Knight, you know, from the Jedi Order." Leia scratches her head, wondering if she is stupid. She feels stupid just asking the next question.

"What is a Jedi?" Anakin's eyes pop open so quickly that it looks almost comical.

"You mean…" His words fade. Anakin frowns at her, his scar deepening. His heavy gaze makes her shift on the ground. "No, I suppose you wouldn't know." He draws his head back, clasping his hands together on his lap. "Do you study much history?"

Leia nods. "Yes," she says as well, which makes her feel even more stupid. But that doesn't bother her so much. At least countless boring hours pouring over Imperial Uprising and Clone Wars textbooks can be put to use!

"What do you know about the Galactic Republic?"

"They were corrupt. Traitors to the people of the galaxy. The Empire struck them down and now they rule supreme." She doesn't know why, but she feels that Anakin is looking at her rather sadly.

"You're not wrong," he says, "they were corrupt. But remember that winners always write history." Leia wrinkles her nose as Anakin stares at her. But before she can prompt him further, he continues, so she tucks away his statement in her mind.

"The Jedi were guardians of peace and justice with the Galactic Republic. They fell when the Republic did."

"Two days before I was born," Leia adds, grinning. "Empire Day." Anakin watches her quietly. Her smile fades. The pieces start falling into place. "You were a Jedi," she murmurs, and he nods once. She grows tense.

The silence around them is deafening. Not even the sand has something to say.

"That was a long time ago," Anakin finally mutters, a faraway look glazing over his eyes as he glances away from her. Leia supposes eight years is a long time. Her life on Tatooine has felt like an eternity. Anakin must have been very young — he can't be older than his mid-twenties right now.

Her eyes drop and land on the rock.

"How come you didn't fall with the Jedi?"

"Because I wasn't with them." Leia stares up at him, but with his eyes sealed shut and his posture relaxed again, she knows she's not going to get any further answer out of him. She guesses this is the job that 'no longer suited' him.

A strong breeze unsettles the sand as the metal skeleton surrounding them hum as if it is still alive. Leia draws her robe closer around herself.

"Their downfall was trust, Leia." She blinks in his direction. "My downfall was lack of discipline." The Force spikes around them again, but this time it's almost agonizing. Gasping faintly, it occurs to Leia that any Force-wielder, friend or enemy, could read what Anakin is feeling, leaving him terribly exposed. She wonders if that's why he thinks he can't be like that Jedi Master she senses he cared deeply about. Maybe he's still falling. Still failing.

She leans forward, and picks up the rock. Its rough exterior nips into her palm. As she examines it, it continues to glow blue. Leia looks back up at Anakin. His eyes are still closed, but he's smiling.

"Now put it back down."

/-|-\

\-|-/

Her next few training sessions have the exact same objective as the first: manually pick up the rock, and then put it back down. Over and over and over again. The only change was when Anakin told her to stay standing up while doing it, during the second session. Leia will scowl at the ground as she continuously bends down to pick the rock up from it, straightens up and bends back down to place it back on the gritty metal floor of the rusty N-1 Starfighter. She will get reprimanded for kicking it up to her waiting palm or dropping it back down. "Discipline, Leia," Anakin will always remind her.

The best part of her sessions are when they end. Orange light will crack across the sky and seep over Anakin's ethereal blue. He will open his eyes, beckon her forward and she'll climb on his back for a ride home. Anakin is very different when he isn't training.

He'll tell her about his adventures as a Jedi, describing his lightsaber duels; spins tales about all the planets he's been to; invites her to the collection of skills he'd learned. Leia usually leans her chin on his shoulder and listens in awe, picturing landscapes rich with green life shrouding riverbanks and cities with staggering buildings overlooking a lively traffic of airspeeders. Dreaming of holding a lightsaber herself… But for a reason she cannot explain, Anakin is always more interested in her boring, quaint life than his super exciting one. He's curious about what she does on her farm, what she learns in her schooling, and even more mundane things like her foods of preference and favourite colour. Leia finds it odd. Even she doesn't ask Zir something like what her favourite colour is, and the Jawa had once told her she asks too many questions.

She doesn't mind, though. Anakin is her new friend. In comparison to Aunt Beru's and Uncle Owen's watchful eyes, and Obi-Wan's ever-lasting faint presence making her reimagine her parents' deaths from being crushed under a crumbling mine wall to cold blooded murder, he is refreshing company. Especially considering the steadily stagnating atmosphere in her home.

"Am I hearing you correctly, Leia?" She flinches, but glowers at Uncle Owen from her side of the office, closer to the door. They have been disagreeing a lot as of late, mostly out of something she starts. But today, it's different. It's more than just a petty disagreement. Sunlight filters through a gap in the curtains, a single golden ray slicing between uncle and niece like two sides of a lightsaber. Looking astonished beyond anger, with his hands spread out on the table between them, he leans forward and frowns deeper at her. "Perhaps you would like to repeat it?"

He's giving her an opportunity to back out and re-shackle herself to his rules and routines. Leia juts her chin up. "I said I don't give a druk about Tatooine: Trades and Operations," she spits, pointing at the fat textbook lying on the desk like a tumour. Uncle Owen's eye twitches. She stomps her foot and unwinds the tap, "I don't give a druk about Tatooine. I hate it here! Just miles and miles and miles of sand. I hate this stupid karking planet—"

"Leia…" he warns, in one of his rarer, quieter tones. But she ignores him. He's not allowed to be angry. Unbidden tears prick her eyes; she blinks furiously, looking away from him.

"I hate it. And I hate this farm, too! Doing the same chores every single day—"

"These chores keep us all alive—"

"—and studying about things I don't care about!"

"You want to go to the Imperial Academy but you don't want to educate yourself?"

Leia screams, kicking the bookshelf beside her. Uncle Owen reprimands her, sounding shocked. Leia doesn't care. "I hate waking up every morning knowing how my day will play out over and over and over again—"

"Enough!" he snaps. From Aunt Beru it's like being slapped on the wrist; from Uncle Owen, it's what she imagines it's like being electro-whipped by the Zygerrian slavers she's seen in textbooks. Leia flinches again, taking a step backwards. But there's an unkept fire roaring within her, now, it's been steadily growing since she'd eavesdropped on their enlightening conversation with Obi-Wan. It fuels her to look up, locking eyes with her uncle's own burning ones.

"You're behaving like a silly little girl. I expected more of you, but I suppose you are, after all, still just a child. You think you won't do the same things over and over again as a stormtrooper? As a pilot? As a Grand Admiral?" He scoffs, and Leia clenches her jaw. "I can tell you, you won't make it anywhere if you don't give up on your silly daydreams now. You won't even be able to keep our farm running. Maybe I was wrong to expect anything from you." A stone sinks in her stomach.

"I hate you," she whispers. All of the outrage that had been pulling his wrinkled features taught sags away, and he suddenly looks very old and tired. Leia turns around, yanks the door open and runs out of the office.

She spends the rest of the day in her room, closing her eyes and pretending she's anywhere else. But her inspiration dries up quickly and she resorts to pacing back and forth, fuming. She has a window that shows endless dunes of bland sand, stretching for miles and miles and miles. Neither her aunt or uncle call her out to do her chores or to eat something, but that's probably because they know she's going to ignore them. At some point when the sky goes scarlet with the setting of the twin suns, a familiar feeling makes her stop mid-pace. Her room glows red.

Leia darts out into the desert's gloom when the house is silent. The feeling that had hit her had been frustrating her for the better part of the evening. Now, she taps into the familiar but oddly different feeling again. Maybe it feels different because it isn't directing her to the abandoned N1-Starfighter, tonight. Her heart quickens at the prospect that they might be doing something different. Real training, even?

Ambling blindly across the desert with only the Force to guide her, Leia listens as the sand murmurs beneath her boots. She keeps her mind busy by calculating her directions — south-west from her home, tens of meters growing into hundreds of meters. The air bites into her exposed skin and prompts her to scrunch her robe closer. It's strangely cold, colder than she's ever felt the desert, but Leia is more curious about what Anakin has planned tonight.

Pick up and put down the rock, but in a different location! Leia can't help but snort at the thought. Just as quickly she sobers up, because she wouldn't put it past Anakin to do just that. Druk.

Only when her fingers and toes are numb does Leia sense that she is close to her destination. Although, she sees it before she feels it — a giant, ragged silhouette in the near distance. A boulder. Aunt Beru's really rubbing off on her because the first thing Leia thinks of is how many hubba gourd could be hiding in its crevices. But her musing is quickly forgotten when she notices the ethereal wisp of blue light glowing at the base of the boulder. Leia marvels at the size of the great rock considering how small it makes the man beside it look.

Wasting no more time, she sprints towards Anakin and the boulder, and as she gets closer the giant rock looms higher and higher above her. A breeze picks up and hisses in her ears. With the shortening distance comes a growing trepidation that she can't place. Reaching Anakin's side, her neck cranes up while staring at the boulder with wide eyes. It's so tall its head is brushing the stars.

"Pick it up." The cold, robotic voice startles her — she recognizes it from somewhere, and it's definitely not Anakin. Leia's heavy breathing stops as she whips around and freezes, her robe swishing at her feet. Dark armour, dark helmet, dark cape, tall and threatening like the boulder beside them. The figure from her dream. She'd almost forgotten about it, but she could never forget this towering, looming figure. Unlike Anakin, they are glowing completely blue. Leia briefly wonders if she had fallen asleep in her bedroom while waiting for her aunt and uncle to do so.

The blue glow suddenly fades. Darkness falls over the pair. The figure's attire is blacker than the night. They breathe deep, inhuman breaths in the silence. The figure had tricked her; which means somehow, they know about Anakin. Leia's heart bangs her chest wildly.

"I said, pick it up." Leia stares at them in disbelief, mouth agape. Is this… no. Is this Anakin? She shakes her head. Has he been playing some sort of twisted game with her? The Jedi's downfall was trust, his voice echoes in her mind. Except now it doesn't sound wise and forlorn like she remembered it, but malevolent and sneering. Her stomach twists; she feels sick. She doesn't know what this figure is but they reek of something dark, something sharp-edged and dripping with blood. It would be unwise to try to run. "Pick it up," they repeat.

Numbly, Leia turns to face the boulder. She wants to curl up next to it and cry. Instead she sets her jaw and juts her chin up.

"Without the Force?" she asks haughtily. Their chuckle skitters over her spine like a tribe of attacking Tuskens disturbing the desert's ground. But they say nothing.

Leia steps forward and crouches down, her palms caressing the rough base of the boulder. She looks left and right. Her hands don't even take up an iota of the boulder. But she takes their silence as a command, so she attempts it. Of course nothing happens. Her shoulders strain and she clenches her teeth under the pressure, but the boulder does not lift from the ground.

Finally, she lets go, breathing heavily, head bowed to the ground. "I can't," she gasps, wondering if they will do something terrible to her. Her face scrunches up thinking about Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru so very far away, sleeping peacefully while not knowing she's not tucked safely in her bed. They would probably be relieved by her disappearance: a burden lifted from their shoulders and one less mouth to feed. A shift in the methodical machine-like breathing disrupts her bitter thoughts.

"Pick it up. I will not let you leave until you have."

Leia keeps trying and failing. The figure keeps repeating the order. Her shoulders start to burn in agony as the muscles of her arms tremble. A fire ignites inside her as she dares to glare at the figure from over her shoulder. They would be able to sense it within her either way.

"Good," they say, "use your anger."

"Anger isn't going to do anything!" she cries, leaning her forehead against the boulder's rough surface.

She flinches at the robotic sneer behind her. "You are weak."

Leia shakes her head. The boulder's skin cuts into hers.

"Pick it up."

Clenching her jaw, she digs her fingernails into the sand surrounding the boulder's rim. With all of her strength she tries to force it up. She can feel the sharp grooves of the rock digging painfully under her nails. Sweat drenches her face and throat. Her shoulders might pop off if she keeps going. Leia stops. She breathes raggedly through her nose. The fire roars within her.

"It's impossible," she growls.

"You are weak… immediately following orders from your new master." Leia stiffens. A part of her is relieved that the figure is not Anakin, while the other part of her wonders how much they know about her training. If they have been watching everything. Or maybe Anakin is in allegiance with them, feeding them information. Breaking his Jawa's Promise. No. Not Anakin. He wouldn't betray her. "Your master, who has abandoned you." Something like magma explodes in her.

"No!" Leia screams, pushing herself off the boulder to face the figure, "He hasn't!"

"Oh no? Then why has he led you to me and left you alone?" Involuntarily, tears well up in her eyes. Leia shakes her head. "The Force that brought you here was so very familiar…" She shakes her head more violently. It was just another trick like the blue light…"Weak." Leia stops shaking her head. She clenches her tiny, tiny fists by her sides. She doesn't need to be big to hurt the figure.

"No," she growls, "I'm not."

The figure clasps their gloved hands behind their back. "Then pick it up. You can already feel how."

Leia turns to the boulder with raised hands. Silly little girl. Still just a child. So you think you can get somewhere in your life? Dream on, Kiddo.

"Anakin, what do you know about Obi-Wan Kenobi?" There's a spike in the Force around them, but his tone is matter-of-fact when he speaks.

"Just that he was also in the Order, though we rarely talked."

He lied to her.

"Haven't you murdered enough Skywalkers, Kenobi?"

A deep rumble causes the surrounding sand to scatter and swirl. The boulder rips from the ground with a skeleton-vibrating tear. Its shadow darkens her world like a moon's eclipse as it begins to hover right above her head. What if Anakin really has abandoned her here with this demon in the night? He is always there to find her, but when she needs him most he is nowhere in sight. She can't tell if sweat or tears stream down her cheeks as she lifts the boulder higher and higher. The cloaked figure steps into her blurred peripheral vision. Side by side, they both look miniscule in comparison to the great beast above them.

"Together, we can achieve so much." Their voice cuts through the rush of hissing sand with the blunt trauma of a gaderffii. But the wielder is not uncoordinated and wild like a Tusken. They are calculated. They are cold. "You have so much potential. Raw, unchecked power buried in this wasteland. Let me teach you to use it."

Leia trembles under the pressure of keeping the boulder afloat. She forces it away with a jerk, disturbing the still air. The shadow of the boulder oozes away from where they stand. To her surprise, the figure strides forward the ten feet it takes to be underneath the boulder again. Their black cape sways in the night. Then they swivel around, and face her. She stares into the bottomless black pits covering their eyes. She wonders if there's even a person beneath that helmet.

Their command is clear. She would love nothing more, but still, she hesitates.

Then their voice carries over the desert, their words striking her heart like lightning — her blood boils, and without thinking she lets go. The boulder crashes back to the ground with a resounding boom. Sand puffs out angrily. Leia stares at the boulder through the haze of sand and dust.

A blood-curdling chuckle echoes through the desert. Gooseflesh erupt across her arms even though the night has gotten considerably warmer. Leia spins around, and back, trying to spot the caped figure in the empty desert. Their voice seems to come from all directions, surrounding her but also reverberating in her skull. "Don't waste the great power within you." Then silence descends like gravity, dragging her shock down with it. Shaking, Leia crumples to her knees.

She feels a familiar presence behind her — the lightning, the fire — and her brows draw together. She can't tell if the fury in the air is hers or his. "Where were you?" she mumbles.

"He was keeping me out," he mutters darkly, "just enough so I could watch. I'm just glad nothing happened to you." Leia exhales a deep, shuddering breath. Shame suddenly pools in her stomach and heats up her cheeks. She broke her discipline.

"I'm sorry, Anakin," she whispers, "I made a mistake."

She feels the warm weight of his hand on her shoulder. "How would you learn without making it?"

She nods, not really listening to him. A bonegnawer soars over the star-dotted sky and swoops into one of the higher crevices of the boulder. She wouldn't be surprised if the creature knows more about her life than she does. "He said that I'm weak like my father was."

Anakin's grip on her shoulder tightens.