Signs of Life
By JalendaviLady
Chapter 3
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Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars.
If you recognize any characters, locations, or things in the following story, George Lucas owns them.
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The forest was beautiful at night.
Planetlight glistened in the early morning dew, making the
ferns ahead seem studded with diamonds.
The tree trunks, such
a drab brown in full daylight, turned a rich color in the dimmer
light.
Ok, Leia, get your head off the trees and onto the
trail. Not that there really was a trail, just the relatively
tree-free trail of a seasonal stream that had died to merely a
trickle. She was running the speeder at far less than its maximum
speed, enjoying the speeder ride through the forest.
A
glimmer of silver barely seen through the trees. The river.
Finally.
Another 5 minutes and she shot out from the
trees and over the vast stretch of water, shimmering as if it were a
solid piece of mica. Deep river. Wide river. She turned
south, following the river..
The sky soon began to glow a
warm silvery purple that slowly turned pink, then faded into a
brilliant blue as the sun began to rise over the trees.
She
revved the engine. I promised myself I would be there soon after
dawn, if not before.
The trees streaked by on either
side. She took off her helmet and secured it to the speeder, then
tossed out her hair into the wind.
A glint of white through
the trees on the left bank. She turned the speeder in a wide arc and
slowed down until she came to a gentle stop just beside the shuttle.
Something's wrong. Leia tried to place her
feelings... Five presences, not two. They have visitors.
They're both injured.
She leapt off the
speeder and ran into the forced-open hatch of the shuttle, blaster
drawn.
She entered the access hall the medical bunks were in
just in time to see an Imperial in an AT-ST pilot's uniform
stun Luke. The other two Imperials in the hallway—the
copilot and gunner?—were holding someone down in the bunk.
She couldn't see exactly what was going on, but she knew she
had to stop them. Anakin seems to be holding them off, but once
their friend can help them, he's a dead or captured, whichever
they're aiming for.
Her first shot struck the man
who had stunned Luke in the back. He fell, making a thud that let
Leia know he was already dead. The next two shots dropped the men
beside the bunk.
"Father?" Leia ran the few
remaining feet to the bunk.
He was breathing weakly, face far
paler than the rest of his skin. He was straining for every breath...
He still needs supplemental oxygen just to survive…
They took the mask off him and were going to hold him down, no way to
reach it, until he suffocated, she realized in a burst of shock
and fear. If they damaged the mask, he'll die because I
can't get him to the other bunk. I'm not that strong.
She grabbed the mask and pressed it over his nose and mouth,
turning the oxygen controls as high as they would go. Please don't
be broken. Please.
It was a few very long moments before
he started softly moaning. After five minutes, his left hand slowly
moved to cover hers.
She almost drew back in surprise at the
touch of the leather glove. It was softer than she'd expected,
and certainly less strong than she had ever thought it would be. He's
holding down the mask, whether he knows my hand is there as well or
not, holding onto his chance to survive, and yet his grip is so
weak...
It wasn't until Luke was beginning to stir
slightly—he'll still be unconscious for a while, that
was a full power stunbolt he took—some ten minutes or so
later when Anakin really seemed to start becoming aware.
He
groaned and tried to squint his eyes closed against the light. Why
would he be sensitive to light? Leia used her other hand to shade
his eyes somewhat, then stood lightly and turned off the bunk's
light with her nose. She hesitatingly used the Force to pull a little
shade around most of the bunk. Are his eyes simply not used to
this much light?
A light squeeze of her hand. "Morning,"
she said warmly.
"Morning, Leia." His voice was
richer without the full Vader mask, Leia decided. There was a warm
natural rumble to it that the harshness of the vocoder had covered
up. He smiled at her, gently. "For a first try at telekinesis,
that was wonderful."
For some reason, she suddenly felt
herself blushing. "It wasn't that impressive. Just a
curtain being pulled along a rod."
"Leia,
throughout history Jedi learned telekinesis with moving a rock in any
given direction but down as a first lesson." Another squeeze.
He's proud of me, she thought in shock. He's
actually proud of me.
Then, she wondered why it suddenly
meant so much.
...
A half hour later, Leia had
managed to move Luke to the other medical bunk and had given him
painkillers for the coming stun headache the minute he was aware
enough to swallow. She had also dragged the three bodies to somewhere
in the back of the shuttle; Anakin didn't know precisely where.
She's taking this too well, he realized. Far
too well. She's only known she's my daughter—the
word still gave Anakin warm feelings—for barely two days, if
even that. Probably less, far less. I'm having problems dealing
with all this change at 43, and she's not even half that yet.
Almost 21. I know I saw a copy of her adoption papers once
somewhere... why can't I remember?
Alright,
Anakin Simeon Skywalker, think. You know everyone made a fuss over
her being the youngest senator ever, surpassing Padmé's
previous record. You know when the official senatorial session began
that year. So, what day of the year...
Soon, he
realized suddenly, very soon.
Leia wandered
back in. "That's finished." There was something
somehow endearing in Leia running around in combat fatigues with her
hair loosely braided and wrapped into a rough bun. "What're
you smiling at?" she asked gently. They were still tiptoeing
around each other, trying not to bring up anything of the past. Luke
was unconscious, and had either of them started something only Luke
would have had a chance of breaking it up.
"You... you
remind me of your mother," he admitted.
"Really?"
He nodded weakly, letting his eyes close. Too much for one
day. Shouldn't have tried to stay awake like this, not after
everything. His brain still ached from the stunbolt he had mostly
neutralized before Leia had arrived and his eyes were still very
sensitive to light. The pain spiked for a moment and he grimaced
before he could hide his reaction.
"Anakin? What is
it?"
He tried to bite out an answer and failed.
"Let
me guess," Leia sighed. "You got stunned during the
fight, but managed to release and neutralize most of the energy.
However, you still managed to end up with a headache and are now
playing the macho human male who can't tell anyone when he is
in pain. Am I right?"
"You really are your
mother's daughter, you know," he sighed weakly.
She
rummaged through one of the many medkits she had arrived with,
pulling out a dose of pain meds.
"Leia?"
"What?" She looked up.
"What time
is it, in Standard Galactic Time?"
She told him. Five
hours. Five hours and they're 21.
He involuntarily
glanced toward Luke. His son was just beginning to stir, really stir,
from the effects of the stunblast that had been Anakin's last
true conscious memory before he had blacked out. Bruises from the
fight had just begun to show on his arms and face. Anakin didn't
even want to start considering Luke's other probable external
injuries, much less the internal ones. He had sensed some of them
through the Force earlier, but had been too distracted by the fight
to keep a running total. Great. My gift to my son on his
21st birthday is several weeks' stay in a medcenter. Some
wonderful father I am. Tears started flowing down his cheeks.
"Father? What is it?" She was a moving green and
brown blur to Anakin's eyes as she came over with the pain
meds. "Is it the headache?"
He shook his head as
much as he could, trying to calm down enough that he wouldn't
cause her any more distress than he already had.
"Father?"
He heard her set the meds down somewhere nearby and felt the tiny cot
mattress shift as she sat down near his head. "Are you alright?
Do I need to comm the medics to come faster?"
"No,"
he finally managed to whimper through the deluge of tears.
He
felt a warm soft hand gently stroke his scalp. I don't
deserve her help, her comfort, her aid...
"No to
which question?"
"Both," he choked out.
"Then what is it?" she asked, gently taking his
hand in her own.
It was a long time before he could speak
anything longer than a syllable clearly again. Hours, in fact. He had
a dim recollection that at some point he had managed to cry himself
to sleep and then woken up some time later, face slightly crusted
over with tear-salts.
"Are you ready to talk about it?"
Leia asked after a moment, giving his hand a squeeze.
He
glanced in Luke's direction, checking on the younger Jedi. He
was awake, still in some manageable amount of pain to judge from the
look on his face—nice try hiding it, my son—and
was rolled over on his side, blue eyes staring worriedly across the
narrow access way at Anakin, pile of warm blankets pulled up to his
chin. He looked worse. His skin was grayer than it had been the last
time Anakin had been awake to check and his eyes seemed to have a
kind of lethargy nesting in them.
"Not yet." He
closed his eyes. "What time is it?" Leia told him again.
Another ten minutes and they'll be 21.
...