Chapter 58
As he recognized their Jedi enemies, Luke drew and ignited his lightsaber in a split second before jumping at them, yelling, "KENO…" However, he was surprised to find himself instantly yanked back to the ground and his lightsaber fell out of his hand to one corner of the room. Leia and Obi-Wan had also drawn their own weapons, but they too were pulled from their hands and sent to the same corner. Then, the last person that Luke had expected to interfere did so. "STOP!" Vader yelled, and they all stared at him in shock. Obi-Wan and Leia both still looked like they were preparing to defend themselves, so Vader took his own lightsaber from his belt and threw it to the corner where he had deposited the other weapons.
"There will be no fighting in this chamber, understood!?" Vader yelled. Still silent, all three of them nodded at him and he pointed accusingly at Obi-Wan. "Kenobi, I don't know how you found us, but you will walk away right now. I will not get into a fight with you right now. Not…" All the anger seemed to drain out of Vader, and he continued in a broken, pleading voice, "Not now. Not today. Not here. Please." Obi-Wan was shocked by Vader's words and even more shocked to notice that his eyes were once again blue. Taking a deep breath, Obi-Wan walked forward and stopped in front of Vader. Vader and Luke both tensed for a fight, but Kenobi surprised Vader by instead pulling him into a tight hug. "I… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Anakin. For everything." Vader remained shocked, but eventually relaxed into the hug and focused entirely on keeping tears from leaving his eyes. Luke and Leia met eyes with mirrored expressions of confusion, each silently asking, What just happened?
Eventually, Vader pulled back from the hug and told Kenobi, "Thank you, Mas… Obi-Wan. Still, I must ask you to leave. This is a family matter." Obi-Wan grimaced and said carefully, "I thought I was once part of the family, whether I was supposed to know that it was one or not." Vader started to glare a little and Obi-Wan quickly added, "Besides, if it's a family matter, we can hardly exclude your children, Anakin." Everyone in the room froze. Leia closed her eyes and turned her head away. Luke was confused and turned his head to Vader for answers, but he was lost as well. "My… my children? Plural?" Vader asked. Obi-Wan walked back and put his hands on Leia's shoulders then told Vader, "Meet Leia Kenobi. Before that, Leia Organa. Before that… Leia Skywalker. Luke's twin sister." The room was completely silent. Luke's eyes went wide and Anakin slowly walked forward to kneel in front of Leia. "You are… my daughter?" Obi-Wan answered, saying, "We didn't know you'd be here. I brought Leia to meet her mother for her sixteenth birthday." Suddenly enraged, Vader jumped to his feet and grabbed Kenobi by the shirt and yelled, "Why, Obi-Wan? Why can't you leave my family alone? Do you have to take everything from me?!" He was suddenly pulled off of Obi-Wan with the Force and Leia stood protectively in front of her Master. "I joined him willingly," she said firmly, "and you sacrificed your family yourself to gain power."
Vader glared back and forth at the two, then not so much offered as ordered, "Stay." He turned back to face the casket, and the other three hesitantly joined him. They all stood there silently for a few minutes until eventually Luke gestured for Leia to follow him into another corner of the room, and she did. Obi-Wan and Vader didn't try to stop them. They just stood facing each other on opposite sides of the casket. They knew that their apprentices wouldn't start a fight here. Leia stood next to Luke, feeling a bit uncomfortable, and even more so when Luke began to speak. "I'm sorry for attacking you. I didn't know you were my sister." Leia raised an eyebrow. "Like it's okay that you would've attacked any other Jedi without hesitation? Do you think that this apology will make me feel any better, because you're sorry about attacking your sister?" Luke raised his hands in a placate game gesture, "No, no, of course not! It's just… it's good to meet you, and I'm sorry about the way things started between us. Although, in all fairness, you're backing the wrong side." Leia glared at him, but he didn't get the hint fast enough. He continued, "I mean, clearly, Kenobi did something to you, but some part of you must realize that the Jedi are…" "Are what?" Leia demanded. "The Jedi are people who decided to sacrifice everything of themselves just to provide for the less fortunate." Luke's eyes widened and he once again tried to calm her. She was quite prone to speaking her mind. "Calm down! These are things that you've been told, but they're lies. Kenobi is brainwashing you! I can show you the peace that we bring." Leia pointed a finger in his face and said sternly, "No. I am a Jedi and I'm proud of it. I help people. It's no story, I've done it. Can you say the same?" Leia then folded her arms in a sign of defiance, leaving Luke gaping at her, completely lost for words. The way she spoke was relentless. She would create a powerful argument in seconds and you'd be reduced to babbling within seconds. He wasn't sure which of them was the older twin, but he had a feeling who was the more intimidating, and oddly enough it wasn't the one that commanded armies of stormtroopers on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, Vader was staring angrily at Obi-Wan. Sensing his gaze, Obi-Wan said, "I sense you have something to say to me. I can feel you glaring." Vader whispered out his question. "Why, Obi-Wan? You knew what I had just lost. Why would you hide my children from me for all those years?" Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that a real question? Do you recall exactly how we lost Padmé?" "How I lost her." "We." Vader glared but relented, "Yes, I do. She brought you to kill me, so I got angry and tried to incapacitate her. It was your fault." Obi-Wan shook his head. "Wrong," he said. "I went to Padmé to find you. I was going to disobey orders. Master Yoda insisted that the Sith must be destroyed, but I was determined to only talk to you. She wouldn't tell me where you were, so I snuck aboard her ship. Your rage blinded you to the fact that it was your friends visiting you on that planet, two people that would rather die than see you come to harm. Did you really think that we would ever want to hurt you?" Vader dismissed his words as lies. "Nevertheless," he hissed, "did you truly think that I would allow harm to come to my children, Kenobi? I thought you knew me better than that." Obi-Wan met his gaze equally and replied, "The you that I thought I knew would never have tried to kill me, willingly participated in the slaughter of thousands of innocents including younglings, or attempted to suffocate the love of his life. I trust Anakin Skywalker with my life, but I don't even know Vader, let alone trust him to watch over my godchildren." Vader was enraged and spat out, "You don't know my pain, Kenobi, don't pretend!" Obi-Wan looked at the ground and responded, "Losing the woman you love to a small moment of helplessness, a single act of anger? Yes, Anakin, I do, as you well know."
Vader was rendered speechless, and Obi-Wan sighed before he continued in a much calmer voice, "Anakin, there's something you must know. Padmé was perfectly healthy when she died." Vader looked at him in confusion and disbelief, and Obi-Wan continued. "By all accounts, she should've lived. The doctors told me that she was only dying because she had lost the will to live. Her body responded to such heart-wrenching sadness and heartbreak that she couldn't even survive for her newborn children." Vader's eyes had gone blank, and then he asked a question that Obi-Wan hadn't expected. "You were there. What did she say before she died?" Obi-Wan blinked but answered honestly, "She told me to hold out hope for you. That there was-" "-still good in me." Vader finished. Obi-Wan was confused. "How did you…" "Just a dream," Vader said, looking away. When he turned back, he abruptly changed subjects. "How's Ahsoka?" Obi-Wan was shocked but said, "She's alright… mostly. She's constantly worried now. She's looking for a way to bring you back to us… you and Rex." Vader looked away and Obi-Wan asked, "How could you do that to him, Anakin?" Vader turned to look at him with a familiar look of guilt mixed with anger in his eyes, "You don't understand. He wouldn't listen to me! He said that he wouldn't support the Empire, not even for me, and I needed him. I needed a friend, someone I could trust."
Obi-Wan looked at him disapprovingly. "Do you know what effect that had on Ahsoka? She sacrificed so much to save Rex. To rescue him from his own mind, she lost every other member of the 332nd. She told me all about it. She buried every single one of them." Vader tried to hide his shock. "I saw those graves. She built a memorial of their helmets next to the wreckage of her Venator. You mean to say that even she was turned on by her Clones?" Obi-Wan nodded. "Her closest friends. And so was I. So were thousands of other Jedi. But she had it worse than most, because she almost died saving one of them from the grip of the Empire, and now he's trapped in his head again. We both know that none of us even betrayed the Republic. Even Master Windu was just trying to stop Darth Sidious, wasn't he?" Vader was silent, but he turned away and called out, "Luke! We're leaving!" Obi-Wan was saddened to have lost Anakin's attention, but hopefully he had at least given him something to think about.
Before they parted ways, both Vader and Obi-Wan wanted to say their good-byes to the other child. Obi-Wan went over to Luke, and Luke tried to push past him, but Obi-Wan grabbed his shoulders and the pleading look in his eyes caused Luke to sigh and wave his hand, gesturing for Obi-Wan to say what he had to say. "First, Luke, I'm very sorry-" Luke scoffed, and said, "Please, don't give me that. I am doing just fine. I am perfectly content…" "-sorry about your aunt and uncle." Luke broke off and listened carefully. He intentionally hadn't thought about his dead adoptive parent figures in years, but this apology reopened the wound. "Me and your father… didn't like each other very much. He would never let me watch you as closely as I wanted to. He wouldn't let me train you. He was afraid of Jedi because of… well, I'm sure he had his reasons. Your aunt… I didn't even really know her too well, I'm sorry to say, but she took you from my arms sixteen years ago, and I always appreciated the two of them. I know they loved you, and I'm sorry that you lost them." Luke sniffles and wiped his face a bit to prevent showing any signs of sadness. "Uh, thanks. Thanks, Kenobi, but I forgot about them years ago. Now, I'm just fighting to protect the galaxy from people like you." Obi-Wan looked at him sadly but nodded and walked away.
As this had been happening, Vader chuckled to see the face of his daughter. "You know, I always… felt something more from you, even on Alderaan." At the mention of her old home, Leia's gaze hardened and she told him sternly, "If you hurt the Organas, I will burn your entire Empire to the ground myself, starting with you. I just might do it anyway. If you're smart, you'll give up now, before it becomes a fight." Vader snickered at the threat, but she looked dead serious. "Oh, you're my daughter, all right." Vader leaned in towards Leia's ear and whispered, "If you want, the option to join us is always open to you, Leia." He pulled back to see her silently glaring at him and shrugged before standing up straighter. "Well, maybe you'll change your mind one day. In the meantime, rest assured that the Organas are well taken care of. In fact, I believe that I heard they've been model prisoners." Leia continued to glare but eventually just sighed and said, "I hope that one day you'll be the one to change your mind. My Master says that you were once a great man. Maybe one day you can be again." And with that, she walked away from him, leaving him questioning what had just happened. She was either insane, or just very brave to speak to him like that. The four of them all walked out of the Tomb together before walking off in pairs going in different directions, separating into the fog that covered the city of Theed.
A/N: Not what you all expected, was it? To be honest, it wasn't my original idea either. I hope you all enjoyed the reactions to Leia's discovery. Naturally, Luke wants her to join them, and Vader's just angry at Obi-Wan (again). Please leave a review with comments, concerns, recommendations, etc., so long as it's not rude and unhelpful. Those reviews will immediately be deleted. Otherwise, I love to hear from you guys about how to improve the story or even just your thoughts. Thanks!