Four
They went to the school the next day and Leia sat next to her father while he discussed her care with the principal.
Solange Twiler could not believe her good fortune. She was being asked to educate the daughter of the Emperor's second in command. "We'd be delighted to have her, Lord Vader" she cooed. "Such a bright and precocious child would be a credit to any institution."
Leia could feel her
father's dislike for this woman practically oozing out of him.
Leia didn't like her much either. She was….sticky, for lack
of a better descriptive phrase. She reminded Leia a bit of Celeste,
but Celeste hadn't been so bad. Leia also disliked the way Solange
ignored her and talked about her like she wasn't there.
Solange got up and personally showed Leia and her father the rooms she would inhabit. Leia looked around them and frowned. The metallic room and furniture were depressing. "It's depressing" she told her father in a whisper.
He acted as though he had not heard her, but a moment later proved he had. "I hope it is not against the rules for me to have the furniture replaced" he said to Solange, his voice carrying a tone which said that it better not be.
It was against the rules, Leia knew from the rule book she had read at the office.
"For such a distinguished pupil, exceptions can be made" Solange gushed.
After they had seen the rooms Leia and her father roamed the campus. Leia noticed that all of the noisy pupils became silent when her father entered a room. They seemed almost afraid of him, though Leia could not think of any reason for them to fear her father. They avoided looking at him and stared at her and, disturbed by their bold gazes, Leia drew closer to her father for protection. Leia could catch short whispers of gossip in their wake.
"Leia Vader…." "I didn't know he had a daughter…." "Can he have children…" "…maybe she's adopted" "I wonder who her mother is?".
The school was too big and impersonal, Leia thought. She would get lost among all the other children. Leia wasn't sure she liked the ides of studying with a lot of other children. So far her lessons had been personalized and taught either by her tutor droid and occasionally, by her father.
"I didn't like Solange" were Leia's first words as soon as she and her father were safely in their air-car.
She was rewarded for her comment by her father's rare short bark of laughter. It sounded a little like a cough, but Leia knew the difference. It was the sound he had made when he had discovered her imitating a broadcast of the emperor. It had become a game with her, after that, to try to make her father laugh. "You are very perceptive, little one. And she'd be heartbroken to hear that".
"But why?" Leia asked, curious "she doesn't particularly like me".
"You will find," her father explained, in the tone of voice he adopted when he was lecturing her "that a lot of people will court your favor without having much liking for you. They will want to make you like them, so that you may be of use to them later".
Leia sat back in her chair, lost in her thoughts. She didn't quite understand what her father was saying, but one of the things she liked most about him was the way he always talked to her as an equal.
"You have an advantage people don't know about though" Vader continued "By using the Force you will always be able to tell which people like you and which are merely pretending".
"But won't they guess that I can use the Force if I scan them?" Leia asked. It had been drilled into her time and again by Vader that she wasn't to let anyone know about her Force strength.
"Force blind people can't tell when they've been scanned, unless you deep probe them" Vader said. And then he continued seriously "Just don't try to scan Mara".
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Mara Jade sat anxiously in her room waiting for her only
friend. She knew Leia was on Imperial Center, she had seen Lord Vader
at Court. And her training master had said she was to have a special
visitor. Both of these things led to one conclusion; Leia was on
Imperial Center and she was coming to play. Leia was the only friend
Mara was allowed to have and even then she rarely saw her outside
their shared self-defense classes.
Mara did not know why her
Master let her have this one distraction but she was grateful. There
was a knock on the door and it opened to reveal Leia.
"Hello, Mara" Leia said running to her friend and hugging her.
Mara stiffened, not used to such demonstrativeness. Then she hugged back, savoring this bit of human contact. "It's good to see you too, Leia" Mara said dryly. Leia's exuberance was alien to her, but it was also enchanting.
So she hugged Mara harder and said "You'll be seeing me a lot more. The Emperor has ordered Father to leave me here for my education."
"You don't want to stay?" Mara asked, trying to ignore the anger in Leia's voice. If she didn't notice it, she wouldn't have to report it.
"No," Leia said seriously "not if it means having to leave Papa"
"The Emperor knows more then we do" Mara said solemnly, hoping her friend would listen. "If he wants you to stay it's for your own good".
Leia drew back to look at her friend. Then she nodded. "So, what have your tutors been teaching you since we last met?" she changed the topic cheerfully and the two girls began the familiar process of catching up.
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Bail Organa strode through the corridors of the Imperial Palace, on his way home from a meeting of the Senate. As he walked through the corridors he saw a tall man clothed in black body armor and wearing a helmet walking with a little girl in white. His breath caught in his throat "Leia…." He muttered almost inaudibly, unbelieving, but still feeling a burst of joy. She was still alive.
Still alive and well cared for too, by the looks of it, he thought as they drew closer. Her hair was still long and she wore it loose, with a hairband to keep it out of her mobile face. As they drew closer he could see how the tall man walked slowly to accommodate his small companion. They were an almost comical pair, with Leia seeming almost a parody of Vader. She looked all right, but was she, he wondered. And if she was, what dark plans of Vader's did she figure in?
Bail had had many troubled nightmares about what had happened to Leia. He and Celeste had investigated frantically, and had found nothing. It had been almost too much for him to lose both Leia and Amidala in such a short period of time. She was alive, he thought wonderingly, turning away so Vader would not see him pass.
