First of all, I have to thank you guys profusely for being so patient with dorky old me. You guys are waaaaayyy to nice, and I really appreciate it. *smacks a kiss on each and every reader's cheek, then passes out a ton of chocolate each*
Due to fandom distractions, returning to college, computer trouble and Darth RL in general, I've been kind of blocked on this story. At a very critical point, I might add! I'm posting this only minutes after finishing it-- it's unbeta-ed, though it has been spell-checked. I figured you guys didn't want to wait any longer, and I'm afraid if I let this sit here I'll revise it to death. I really, truly and sincerely hope this doesn't suck. I was having so much trouble with this scene, and then all the sudden it transformed and jumped, in full form, into my brain. *shrugs*
Thank you again for bothering to read this,
Meredith
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The Widow Skywalker 3b/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com
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At the gate, Luke stopped, his body stilling so instantly that for a moment his mind was surprised he had not leapt over the fence and continued his sprint. The wind was in his ears, long and low, the voice of a mythical Tatooine She-Bird dying on the sun baked rocks. For a moment so short and so long it shot through him, he was back on Bespin and the safe, happy story he'd always told himself about his parents was falling away, slipping through thick, black gloved fingers.
(--_I_ am your father--
"My father wasn't a soldier, he was a navigator on a spice freighter."
His eyes were blue, like mine, and Mother was a pretty outlander down on her luck. They met at a festival because his gaze followed her through out the fire-lit evening and she finally came and asked him if he wanted to dance...
"That's what your Uncle wants you to believe."
Mother was a thin, small shade of a woman, beautiful like a dragon's best egg, but she was sick when she bore me and the blood flowed out of her and over the sand like a twisted ocean. I was born out of death, that's why Uncle Owen disliked me in that quiet, sullen way; because I had stolen someone's life in order to have my own, even if I didn't mean to. Maybe Mother and Owen were friends-- yes, that must be why he loves me but his eyes are sometimes so cold. Father couldn't make it without Mom-- he left me in the circle of Aunt Beru's arms and then he got careless, got reckless, but he really did mean to come back and get me. He miscalculated, a fraction of a decimal of a parsec off and the ship didn't make it back and someone sent Uncle Owen the few things stored in Dad's locker at the station. That was it. It's all over now, just dust and bones under the sand and floating in space. The end, amen-- go to sleep now, Luke, and don't ask anymore questions.
--Search your feelings--)
He had known it to be true, that Vader was his father and everything he'd known until then had been smoke, mirrors and plays on words. In the endless tunnel of air and sound, he'd only been able to see that hand, stretching out, offering. Gifting-- the truth, from another point of view.
And yet...
He'd heard a voice then, not Yoda's, not Ben's but Beru's soft honey tones of careful warning. Don't take gifts from demons (from dark men with the face of death); earn what you want of them, pay for it, but don't take it as a gift. And he'd let go of the rail he'd been gripping so harshly, with the Force spilling up inside of him, passive and aggressive, all-mysterious and infinitely knowable all at once. He'd watched Vader became a small, black point of non-light high above.
("Ben, why did you lie to me." Not a question, an accusation. "_BEN_~!")
And, in those endless white, sterile corridors of the command ship orbiting Sullust, he'd closed his eyes and felt he had nothing to hold onto. No real past-- the face of Uncle Owen was completely understandable in this new light, and Beru's face seemed to shift and change, become childless. The eternal present bore down on him until he felt Leia's hand slip into his own, cool and simply _there_.
In his dreams, the blood ocean expelled from his mother changed, became endless and more wild.
(What manner of woman, what order of creature, would...
--marry
--bare the son of
--_love?_
such a monster?)
Leia's anger towards Vader, towards Father, was twofold; the harm he'd done to her and millions, in its own way so personal and deeply cut. Luke had known that all along, had understood it and felt it sometimes in himself. For the first time, though, he understood the other edge of the sword Leia wielded so carefully against the rest of the world.
In those dreams and pieces of memories they'd exchanged, Mother was bright and good and kind.
Father was tainted.
Dark touches light, light becomes shade, becomes shadow, becomes like unto the darkness itself and...
(What manner of woman...)
But She _was_ good and kind-- it was something so true it could not even be fathomed to question it. It was in Leia's dreams, as real and solid as rubies in your hands. Looks like blood, shimmering-- but something more precious.
Feeling the Force around him, in the spinster-like trees, in the tall copper grass and in the red light on the horizon, Luke felt his fear fall over him and pass through him. A distant echo-- and he put out his hand.
The gate was tied haphazardly with twine but, before Luke's fingers could brush against it, the string fell away and the breeze seemed alive as it pushed the barrier aside. A child's laugh, yet deep like a man's, seemed to brush up against Luke like the wind; he hadn't felt that presence so keenly even on Endor, and it seemed strong and vibrant now.
(Go see your Mother, Luke.)
The sunset passed easily through the open windows and doors of the hut-- Luke found himself in it's single, small room, gazing at the threshold leading out to the other side. Through the doorway, he could see a makeshift garden, where the weeds grew with the crops because they, too, had their uses. In the corner of the room, there was a large, curved white basin, and some ways away from that a fire pit cut carefully into the floor. Other than the trunk sitting against the opposite wall, the only adornment Luke could see were three dresses, hanging faded and sullen from nails.
"Hello?" he began, hesitant to break the quiet saturating the stone foundation. Taking a step forward, he felt his breath still and wither away in his throat. A figure moved into the doorway, for a moment a mere outline backlit by the fading crimson sun, and then--
She looked like Leia, but the resemblance washed away with one quick gaze and this woman became her own person, unique and carefully detailed. Her face was round like the white moons over Hoth, skin pale and her eyes a deep, mysterious every-color that faintly pretended to be amethyst or brown. Her hair seemed to shift about her with a life of its own, a heady deep color. Briefly, he saw her faded robes and the harvest of fruit she held against her chest, but his eyes were drawn back with eerie want to her eyes and her hesitant, welcoming smile. He could see behind her glass-mask face (so like Leia again!) that she was seeing both him and another time, and her bones where shaking in motionlessness beneath the wrappings of her skin.
"Hello," she returned, her grip on the wide basket of fruits tightening noticeably. She watched him so carefully, like a bird you reach out to be startle accidentally.
"Are you--" he stopped, because he could see a flicker in her expression. The lines of her face and the curves of her cheekbones were shapes from his baby dreams, but she seemed ageless. "Are you the Widow Skywalker?"
Briefly, the woman caught her lower lip against her teeth, "Yes, I am."
Luke had told himself, ever since he'd heard that name spoken in the market place at Jaquirie, that he expected nothing. A dead end, a phantom, a dream, loving arms, or a bitter old woman to run him out of his desperate gripping at the past-- he couldn't know, could never really know because his memories were deep and infant-colored. He only had Leia's rememberings to go by-- don't get your hopes up, don't anticipate anything. Desert wisdom, don't let yourself get disappointed.
If he had, somewhere between his ribs, conjured a childhood image, this woman was and wasn't everything he'd imagined. She defied simple definition-- where Beru's mystery had been deeply buried as moisture on the farm, hers permeated the world around her-- she held herself like no peasant or lord he'd ever seen. She was Mother, and it surprised him that he knew it so deeply, so quickly and with such certainty. The knowledge of Vader had been terrible and inescapable-- this was different, but somehow just as _true_.
"I'm Luke Skywalker," he didn't blurt it, the words simply said themselves in a calm, ordered voice. With a sudden, real feeling of panic, he wished to take them back and choke them down, because her expression was unreadable but somehow sad. Honestly, boyishly, he said-- "I'm not sure what I expected, telling you that straight off."
"You're a ghost," she drew the words up through her body with her breath, "you must be, oh--" he'd never heard anyone say that simple syllable with such fervor, "tell me your name _again_."
"Luke Skywalker," he said, wanting to reach out to her. "I heard your name in the market, and I thought--- Skywalker, I mean, and... if you don't believe me, Leia..."
"Leia?" she seized on that name too, her hands releasing the basket and letting it fall away without thought, "By the Force." An old oath, sworn and meant, and she crossed the floor, stood before him and raised a trembling hand to his temple. "I have to believe you-- there's no way I couldn't... but," her eyes darted, very briefly, away before coming to gaze at him once more, "I haven't seen my son since he was two months old."
He almost echoed her words in disbelief-- two months!?-- but bit them back as a wave of understanding crossed him. Leia, five and weeping in her dreams-- the sorrow was in her voice as she told him, "she died when I was very young, she must have. One day she was gone, and no one would speak of her... on Alderaan, the dead are secret and sacred."
Everything, everything was from a certain point of view. Father _was_ a pilot, a Jedi, Obiwan's apprentice cut down by Vader, but also Vader himself. Machine and man, Anakin and Sith Lord, blessed, damned and everything in between. Who then, was this woman who touched him with hands that must only remember the soft flesh of a baby boy and a warm presence curled against her breast?
"Leia thinks you died," he said, merely for the comfort of saying something.
Simply, "I did. We all die-- little deaths." There came a laugh then, sweet and strangely stark, "Sometimes I think the big one is just a formality." Mother took a breath, "She's alive then, Leia? And you know that she's..."
"My sister," the words were still new and filled with pride on Luke's tongue, "Yes. She's on Coruscant, trying to set up a transition government. I can't say I envy her the job."
With a faded hoped, "Then the Emperor is really dead?"
Luke merely nodded, watching as she turned away and drew her thin arms around herself. He reached out to her, came behind her and put a hand on each of her arms.
"How funny, how strange," she said softly, "after all these years... and I'm not sure how I feel, knowing he's really dead. Happy-- relieved-- like my vengeance has been sated?"
"He wasn't really like a person," Luke said, marveling at how easy and yet difficult it was to simply talk to her. Easy-- relation, love, simple and unexpected; hard, for every one of the years lapping between them like a dark void.
("She was very beautiful, but somehow sad."
"Pardon me, Princess. You quite remind me of someone I used to know..."
"You know it to be true".)
"He ruled everything so harshly, I still have trouble believing we're free," the Jedi continued, though he felt a shift in his mother's body language, "but we are. I was there." Her hand came up to touch his mechanical hand. On the ship, with the nebula blooming outside the wide window, One-Two-Bee and then Leia had assured him the replacement was almost indistinguishable from the real thing, unless one had training in mechanics. The synthetic flesh was self-warming, and the metal joints shaped like the bones they substituted, and yet...
She knew.
"They make these things so well, these days," she said, turning his palm over in her own, fingers trailing along the shapes of his palm. It came to him that she loved him without knowing which side of that spinning, endless coin he had landed on, dark or light. And then, too, he remembered a fairy song-- not one from Tatooine, but from some ocean world were the Rebellion had camped--
(... there was dark and then there was light, but there was no line in between...)
"Vader is dead, as well," Luke swallowed, trying to read the words etched on the double black moons of her eyes.
"I know." Deftly, she raised her free hand and drew down the sleeve, so that he would see the raised, lace shambles of flesh that scarred down her lower arm. "I felt it go right through me-- didn't know where I was, for a while, leaning over the fire. I could _feel_ anything, even the burns. It surprised me to, find them after everything cleared." She took both of his hands in her own, "You know, don't you?"
"I never can tell," Luke smiled weakly, "I think I know things and then they change." With a childlike intensity, "What's your name?"
"My given name is Padme Naberrie," it rolled off her tongue, foreign flower-scent. "My reign name was Amidala, my married name-- which no one ever used-- was Skywalker, and in the prison they called me Lady..."
"Vader," Luke finished, and the word was heavy. "Yes, then. I do know-- he told me."
"He--" Padme began, then shook her head. "Where do we start?" Then, in one fluid motion, she embraced him and her tears were hot but cool like rain against his neck. "My son," she said, "I used to tell myself you were dead, just so I could stop hurting, wondering... I never knew what became of you, never was able to see to your protection like Leia. I don't really _know_ you... and you, what must you think of me?"
"I think," said Luke with only a moment's pause, "that I was never so lucky as to hear your name in the market place." He held onto her, feeling the interstice strength in her seemingly fragile bones. Reluctantly, he allowed her to draw away, and by some unspoken agreement they both bent to retrieve the basket and fruit that had scattered haphazardly on the floor.
"Are you hungry?" Padme asked with an almost commanding gentleness, "I was just about to have last meal."
"Actually, yes." Luke nodded, dropping the last of the pink-green orbs into the basket. "I've been rather jumpy as of late."
"I can't imagine..." Padme shook her head, hair like a mystic's veil, "But how many Skywalkers can there be in one galaxy?" Again, she smiled with a hesitant, bitter joy, "A handful are dangerous enough as it is." She moved to the fire pit, cracking a hardened seed against the side and letting the liquid pour onto the straw until it leapt into red-yellow fingers of flame. He watched her fetch water from a jar hidden behind the trunk, then helped her settle it properly for cooking, mimicking her movements and she peeled the fruit.
"Where _do_ we start?" he asked suddenly, wanting to devour knowledge more than the sweet scent of fruit-meat that teased his nose.
"Maybe," Padme began cautiously, "You can tell me where you grew up?"
"Tatooine," he remarked without thinking, watching the fire throw an odd sort of dread against the blush of her cheeks. "Didn't you know?"
"No--," his Mother said mournfully, the next word said with fondness but like a curse, "Obiwan..."
Luke turned swiftly as he heard a clicking against the simple stone walkway, his body relaxing when Artoo's squat form rolled through the doorway. The droid made a few squawks, as if in reprimand for being left outside so long, but then it's beeping turned to modulated coos. Padme's beautiful, endless smile showed on her face once more as she reached out to trace the symbols embedded just bellow Artoo's small dome.
"Artoo Detoo," she said, shaking her head, disbelief trailing in her long hair. At Luke's surprised expression, she tilted her head back and laughed, a giggle, a tinkle of pure delight. Looping an arm around her son, she leaned in, her hand coming to touch on the hilt of his lightsaber tucked at his side. "A Jedi," she said with pride a just a hint of regret. "There's something I bet they never told you... a very big secret I'm just now starting to learn. Two, actually."
"And what is that?" he grinned up, feeling like a child getting ready for a story.
"One-- you get back what you give away," and then Padme's grin became innocently mischievous, "and-- The Universe's harsh exterior hides beauty and a somewhat perverse sense of humor."
= = = = = = = = = = =
And now, the feedback song.
[to the tune of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"]
"Meredith has finally posted more of this fic,
an occurrence that causes some dis-be-lief,
And now she will love you for-ever,
if any feedback you would choose to leave."