LEIA
I see you with your husband… niece. He's teasing you, right now, about being a princess. Do you know your father used to do that to my sister? —Only your mother was a Senator. Do you know she is where you have inherited your political sense from? Your cool head? Your patience?
Your sense of being personally wronged, your sharp tongue, your hot temper—those are from your father. My sister had a quick temper, too; but she had a secret way of dealing with it, a way of being angry without losing her cool; a way of keeping in control. Even now, I do not know what she did, else I would try to tell you. Grandmother never taught me or Sola. Only her.
I do not even try to make you hear me, niece. I'm afraid you will. And I don't know what to say to you, except that your mother tried till the end to find a way to keep you two, and that's something I'd rather tell Luke.
What to call you is as difficult a problem as what to call myself, for I no longer have a name; it is yours now. But your name was my own name, so how can I call you that? There is your nickname, your childhood name… Lelila. But that was Grandmother! Nor can I call you "Mistress Solo"—that was my sister's best friend.
So I drift here without a body, watching, wondering, pondering as I wait… This is tiresome business, this waiting. I do not know what I wait for. I used to think it was my sister's death–but I stayed. Then I believed it was her husband—but there was Luke, lonely at his father's death, and I could not leave him. When he married, I thought, I'd go—but you had children, niece, and I was fascinated how you and Han, unwitting of the deep friendship your mothers had shared, bonded and raised your children in a way a lot closer to normal than your own childhoods had been.
I rather like you, niece. I wish we could've known each other, but I don't think we would've gotten along too well. I'm too much like Grandmother to be much more than a nuisance.
Oh, dear. I've done it again. Grandmother and Grandmother—it's so confusing, even to me! My father's mother, one of the Twenty, was a Jedi Master who formally left the Order to the relief of many; and my mother's mother, a seemingly disreputable blackmailing bartender, who few knew the true nature of. I only know what she really was because my sister told me, niece, one of those nights long ago when she was content to let me stay around her… to talk to me… to not fling me out, as she had a tendency to, claiming I invaded her privacy.
In that sense, I'm glad none of you hear me. It keeps you from getting angry at me, from forcing me back out into the lonely expanse where I don't belong. I shouldn't be dead. Even supposing it had been long enough, what killed me was too ludicrous to have been fatal. I think the Dark Fallanassi were afraid I'd inherited the Crest and could control their kamargh. I wonder if they've ever realized that they targeted the wrong sister.
I said around Luke that your mother was the most Fallanassi of the lot of us. It's true. My supposed "bartender" of a grandmother had actually been a teeklefa, descended directly through the maternal line from the last only child of the ruling Fallanassi monarch. My grandmother had been selected as monarch but chose not to rule, letting her baby sister handle the Crest until she passed it to my sister. What did your mother did with it?
Remembering how your mother could always defend herself, I think that Grandmother taught her something else, too: the secrets of a zerchani. I don't know what the name means, but I do know my grandmother was one of the few of that aggressive sect, rarer even than the Fallanassi Jedi, who number fewer than a dozen at any one time.
I guess it's rarer because it's like that old fighting style, Vaapad, in that its silent killing techniques can lead to the Dark Side. Your mother was never in danger of falling; nor was Grandmother. I wonder what the secret is.
Grandmother, being a genetic full Fallanassi, lived some centuries before settling down, so I guess she'd learn to deal with anger in that time. But I don't know how my sister did it, or even what she did. I wish I knew. I wish I knew how she assassinated Kar Vastor, the man who drove Jedi Master Billaba insane. Vastor had at least one Jedi Master guarding him at all times, and a constant minimum of three guards.
Han's calling you "Your Worshipfulness" again, niece. That Isela could have called my sister that. Maybe Palpatine wouldn't have been brave enough to kill her.
Maybe you could have known your mother.
PLEASE REVIEW!!! :)