Reluctant Heir to the Force
Leia had almost worried when Luke didn't show up after the battle was over, until the Death Star debris had finally begun to fall on Endor.
But she could feel her brother's presence in the Force, and that sense of him was telling her he needed to be alone, that he needed to grieve.
This victory had come with a great price for the young Jedi. She smiled at her usage of the title. Jedi.
How many years ago was it that my father told me stories of men and women with glowing swords and strange, magical powers? How many years was it past now that he told me their tales, some heartbreaking, some joyous?
Father…
Her smile faded as she remembered. Bail Organa wasn't her real father. Darth Vader was.
No. She shuddered. That monster wasn't her father. He could not have produced her and Luke. Such good could not come from the very depths of hell.
Luke…Leia turned from the sight of the Rebels crowding around the fires to the balustrade, her eyes on the forest though her thoughts were farther off.
How was she going to comfort him when he got back from wherever it was he'd disappeared to? The loss of the father he wanted so desperately to save was going to devastate him. Had already devastated him.
It had been in the middle of battle when she had felt him crying out in pain. Father! Father, help me! Please!
She had been secondarily distracted, and it was that moment that she cried out herself. His pain had given her new knowledge about herself. Luke was right. She was just as much heir to the Force as he was.
Yet acceptance of it meant acceptance of Vader.
I will not, I cannot accept that creature as my father…
Yet Luke is his son. And I am his sister. To deny one is to deny the other. She sighed heavily, her emotions confusing her. One moment she wanted to run from Luke and all that he stood for, all the beliefs about herself he shattered, the next she wanted nothing more than to reach out to him, comfort him, tell him she understood.
Mother, I wish you were here to tell me what to do. Luke's questioning the evening before had brought her mother out of the mists of time and to the forefront of Leia's memories. She could not have been more than two or three when her mother died, but she remembered a little, and the little she had, she clutched to fiercely. Her mother.
Would her mother – their mother – been proud of their accomplishments? Leia, a fighter for freedom, her mind on the galaxy and politics, Luke, a member of a calling much higher, the resurrection of the disremembered Jedi order?
Would she have been proud to see Luke go back to try to fight what their father had been?
Abruptly, her questions were brought short.
Luke. He's here.
Sure enough, out of the darkness came that figure of light, dressed all in black. But there was something sad in those blue eyes, something that made Princess Leia Organa of the House of Alderaan sigh with relief, and something that Leia, sister of the last remaining Skywalker, cringe, feeling the grief radiating off of him.
She reached out to take his hand, and smiled. He smiled back. // It's all right, Leia. //
She almost hesitated before stating it. // He's gone, then. //
// Yes. //
// I'm sorry, Luke. I know you wanted to save him. //
// I did, Leia. // Luke's smile brightened. // I did save him. He died a free man…free from the Dark Side…free from his master's control. The emperor is no more…and without Anakin, I would never have done it. Our father has been resurrected to the light. He is no longer Vader, but Anakin Skywalker, as he once was. //
Leia smiled back, but it would take a very long time before she came to grips with who and what she was. She had used being Vader's daughter to win over the Noghri, but that had not been something easy to acknowledge.
Nor had it been easy to have children with Han, knowing Anakin Skywalker had started out innocently enough. A Jedi, he had been. And a child before that.
Her children would face much temptation. The Dark Side had very many varied paths, each one highly persuasive.
But that was the other side to the coin for all Force users.
They, in time, would learn to recognize it and cast anger away.
Such was the way of the Jedi.
It had been that way for millennia, and the Skywalker family line would continue the tradition.
The circle went on unbroken.