"He can't just leave!" Leia leapt up from the table and ran out after Obi-Wan, faster than Padme could've dreamed of. "Master Kenobi! Master Kenobi!"
"Leia! Don't you run off like a little hooligan!" Breha stood, gathering up her voluminous skirts, but she was pinned in place by Luke's unabashed stare.
"You never wanted me, did you?" Luke's voice was shaky, and his face crumbled. "All this time...I could've been a Jedi. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Because you didn't want me. You wanted to throw away the spare."
"Luke," Bail put a solid, warm hand on Luke's shoulder, and grimaced when the boy flinched, full-bodily away from his adoptive father. "It wasn't like that. Padme, tell him the truth, Padme."
Startled at being addressed for the first time since Leia had stormed out— she could hear the girl's voice echoing loudly and angrily from the foyer— she met her son's eyes. He really didn't look like Anakin. Anakin, for all he had somewhat pretty features for a man, had been utterly harshened by his experiences and the serene face and mannerisms he tried (and failed) so hard to adopt. Even as a child, there had been a cocky surety in him Luke lacked; the certainty that he was more than what he was, that he would take what he wanted if circumstances hadn't deigned to give them to him. The wholly devastated expression on his face was one she had seen on the holos, a quick snapshot in a sweeping view of a grand standing ovation by the Senate, nearly ten years ago now. She'd seen it on her own face.
"Padme," Bail's voice was more urgent, "Tell him the truth."
"The truth is…the truth is…" she couldn't find the words that would make this all better, once, when she was a better woman, a more hopeful woman, they would've flowed from her mouth like liquid gold. She could've found the perfect words to inspire in her only son the confidence, love, and reassurance that he so desperately needed, that he begged for with his eyes.
She took a deep breath, and walked around, and pulled him into her embrace. He fought her a little, but yielded like butter beneath her molding, warm hands.
"The truth is, Luke," she whispered into his hair, "Bail wasn't wrong in giving you to the Jedi. There was no better place for a vulnerable, Force-sensitive baby. Leia wasn't Force-sensitive like you, so she couldn't have gone to them. But it was wrong to separate you, to try to hide you from each other. Even Jedi have family, have a legacy, have a home. Maybe if I died, things would've been different; it isn't something I could bear thinking of, but I couldn't live without you nor your sister. I loved you both from the moment I decided I would bring you into this world, I loved you from before you were even born. Nothing could keep me away from you. Know that I would never, ever give you up. I didn't choose to leave. I will always, always choose you."
"You chose me and Leia," Luke said quietly, body at last going limp. His hands clutched at her dress. "You chose us...over Father?"
"I did," she replied, "Bail isn't a bad man, Luke. Don't ever think that. You should thank him and love him for the generosity and kindness he's shown our family and our home. You should try to love him because your sister loves him so dearly—"
"That's not fair," he whined, "About Father, about the Jedi, she's so...mean."
"And you're older, aren't you?" Padme wished he was small enough that she could pick him up. But she'd missed out on those days. "Lead by example."
"By a minute," he muttered, and his swelling sorrow seemed to have defused.
"By something like twenty minutes," Bail mused, carefully apart from the two of them, his dark eyes wistful. "I was there, you know. Obi-Wan had hailed my ship to the steps of the Temple. If he hadn't been there, your mother would have died. Maybe you would have as well."
"Bail," Padme warned, but he continued on, putting a gentle hand on Luke's shoulder.
"It was horrible," Bail said, "And everything was falling apart. The Jedi had just assassinated the Chancellor, and Anakin was on the steps of the Temple with an army when your mother stopped him at the doors."
"-Bail!"
"Do you think he shouldn't know?" he looked at her, "What he almost did to you, he almost did to the son he claims to love so much as well."
"You have no right," Padme flung Bail's hand off Luke's shoulder, and gathered her son up to her breast. He wrapped his arms around her, and she realized he wasn't shaking, she was. His pale eyes were discerning, and worried, and a streak of envy darkened her waters, and not for the first time. She was always behind, and left wondering what was going on in the heads of stubborn Skywalkers. Would this child be as unpredictably volatile as his father?
"He marched on the Temple, on the orders of a despotic dictator, to slaughter children and the elderly, and when your mother begged him to stop, he choked her and threw her down the stairs— all 600 of them. It could've killed her. It should've, but by the Will of the Force your mother survived. Master Kenobi was a hero who saved the remains of his people from singular annihilation by the Palpatine Regime. That is the man I fought to protect you from, Luke."
Her bodice dampened. Luke refused to look up.
"Are you finished?" Padme said dryly, lips pursed. Bail looked truly exhausted, and rubbed his beard with a heaving sigh.
"As a matter of fact," Breha interjected, "I'm not. Are you happy now, Padme? You win—"
"Is this a game to you?" she snapped, "Do you think it's funny to play with my children's lives like this? You have no right to either of them, and you know it. I will always, always be grateful for what you've done for me, but that gratitude only goes so far." And it can so easily sour into resentment…
"I knew we should never have taken the boy," Breha hissed quietly, but not so quietly that Luke didn't hear it. "That fucking Jedi…"
"Breha, that's enough," Bail said sharply, but the woman had already flounced out of the room.
"I hate her," Luke muttered, squeezing Padme.
"Your mother is just upset," he tried to reassure the quietly sobbing boy, but Luke was having none of it.
"But she's not my mother, is she?" he shouted.
"Luke—"
But it was too late. The boy had run out of the room, his footsteps echoing.
Bail collapsed back into the plush chair.
"Well, that was a disaster," he said.
Padme grimaced. Maybe once, she had an ounce of pity for Breha. The Alderaani queen had been the subject of vicious gossip back in the Republica. Her fertility issues were infamous and made her the subject of the pettiest cruelty. Things had come to a head for Breha Organa in the last years of the Clone Wars, right before Padme had gotten pregnant the first time and miscarried, when her miracle child had died at four years old.
Leia didn't didn't look anything like that precious baby girl Breha had lost. But after her own sip of loss, after witnessing the agony of the Alderaani queen, when Padme had fallen pregnant again, nothing, not the scorn of the Senate or even a rejection from Anakin would have made her give up her children. And she hated that Breha had become her enemy. In hurting Luke with her callous word fueled by fear, the gauntlet had been thrown.
Trying to catch a fleeing Master Jedi was way harder than trying to catch Luke, who was the fastest person she knew, Leia thought as she hauled her skirts high above her knees and sprinted after the stately man in robes.
"Master Kenobi!" she shouted, nearly tripping, anxiety rendering her graceless. "Please wait!"
At the door to the palace, he stopped and turned.
"I'm afraid I really can't help you Princess," he said, exasperated. "You may ask your mother—"
"It doesn't make sense!" she interrupted. "It's not fair that a man like that thinks he has the right to call himself my father."
"Oh Leia," the Jedi Master, with his piercing gray eyes and handsome red hair looked ten times older than his years. "You really are his spitting image, but so much more enduring. If only things were as clear cut as you see them. What I would give for a taste of that vision you share."
Leia swallowed, and gathered up the dregs of her royal grace, her clenched tight in her fist, so tight she was afraid her nails would bruise the skin of her palm. "I know he was wrong, and I'll never forgive him."
"Once, Anakin Skywalker also knew right from wrong, and the two were so anathema to each other that he could see no gray. At the end, he dealt completely in absolutes. I wonder, Princess Leia, will you learn at least the folly of this from him, if nothing else? Or will you allow your feelings to cloud what you know to be true? No one said you must love him, my dear, though he is indeed easy to love. But will you choose to hate him at the expense of your relationship with your brother? Your mother?"
"You don't care about Luke," Leia said, but Master Kenobi was already shaking his head; he knew she lied even as she spoke, and she knew it too.
"I care very deeply for that boy," he smiled, and though they were different in every way, Leia saw only Padme's grief reflected in his expression, and she wondered what sort of life someone had to live to look as beleaguered and wretchedly torn as they did. "Though it is not the Jedi way. I have never been a perfect Jedi. And now, looking at you two, and the kind of people the Force whispers you will be...truly, you hold the fate of the galaxy in your hands."
"What are you talking about?" there was something behind that, she was sure.
"So she didn't give them to you," he murmured, considering Leia through narrowed eyes. "I thought not."
"Master Kenobi…"
"Sporadically, Anakin has written letters to you two," he explained. "Though we did screen them, some of the contents were not exactly appropriate for younglings. The ravings of a madman, really. But if your mother really wants you to know the truth from the man's own lips… I would ask for them."
Thank you everyone for your kind words and enthusiasm! This story really is wild and took on a life of its own. Anakin is back next chapter :)
YellowWomanontheBrink,
May 17, 2021
952PM
