Dear Leia,
A name I know only on flimsiplast. I've been thinking of you, my daughter. And what a name! What was Padme thinking, weighing down a youngling with such a name? It has been years since I first laid eyes on your lovely face, the very image of my mother, your grandmother, and it is only now that I question the choice of your name.
Your mother will tell you these stories much better than I could. Her people do not worship heathen small gods of the sands, but instead venerate their ancestors in the Force. You're named after the patron of her house, Aste Lukamileia. The first Queen of Naboo, a conqueror and a shrew who eschewed the company of men. It's a dreadful name, full of weight and destiny. It is a sad story, and so perhaps appropriate. Look where we've led you, my child. You are far away from me.
Lukamileia was the leader of the human settlers of Naboo, first to unite the humans and Gungans in an alliance that lasted two hundred years. It was her armies that conquered the planets of the Chommel sector, and in her last years before her death, she overthrew the emperor of Chommelia and brought the sector into the Republic, connecting the Core directly to the Mid Rim territories. She died when she was a hundred and seventy-seven, and her feats were legendary.
But legend does not equal love. In the end her children betrayed her. She had six sons, and each desired a kingdom to rule. They cut her into seven pieces, leaving her heart on Naboo, the land she loved best. Her spirit haunted them as a judge in their halls, and her ghost was as wise in death as she was in life, and by following her wisdom they had wealth and prosperity in their lands.
On Naboo, she appeared to the Boss of the Gungans, and begged them to depose her sons. On seven planets, the Gungan settlers rose up and slew every King of Naboo. And so the Naboo Empire fell, every planet shattering into civil war. Lukamileia appeared, in queenly attire, and declared that the humans of Naboo should only be ruled by a childless woman, and the throne should never be inherited. The Gungans were fierce, and so enforced the decree of a ghost.
For years I could not help but see the ancient histories repeat; your mother was named for her as well. Padme Amidala, "Champion of Liberty"—a perfect name for the most perfect creature I have ever known, until the day I meet you and your brother. Will Lukamileia's bloody legacy reincarnate in you yet again? Will you hear her voice, her dreaded counsel?
The ghost of a queen named "Sorrow Void of Mercy" is known to walk among the living. Will the name Mercy stand against her dark legacy, even as your twin is named Void? Queen Lukamileia had mercy for six orphan boys, and they took every ounce of her, used and abused her even after death. Padme had mercy on me, and look what I've done.
The Jedi say there is no death, but the Force. Twenty years, and I understand at last. The dead walk among us, helpless but for the sentients of the galaxy who still tie them to the living. Surely, I am haunted. Beware voices in the night, child. I dreamt of your mother as an angel, and angels are real. Who is to say ghosts are not?
Your father,
Anakin
Dai Bendu, the Jedi religion, was the faith of the civilized sentient, but on Alderaan, the eldest of magisters practiced numerology.
Mama was a woman of the faith, and as the Queen, the religious leader of the planet; Leia had spent almost as much time in temples as she had in the palace. She could count, and recount, and calculate the odds of her future as easily as she could breathe. When she dreamt, she dreamt in spiralling numbers. As Princess, she was a spiritual leader, and was trained to read the runes and count the numbers. She didn't really believe in it, not the way her Mama did, but sometimes they were just accurate enough to be ominous.
The seventh visit, Leth inverted. The sigil of her name, and love, Levanoi inverted— a great change was coming, and she was powerless in every way to stop it. Luke felt it too; he was extra restless, and snippy. Usually he retaliated with no more than an eyeroll when Leia was mean to him, but the entire ten-day past he'd been rude right back. It had driven Mama up the wall, so much so that he'd been sent away to Padme's house while Leia was kept at the palace.
Not that it stopped her moping. She refused all her lessons, she turned away the servants, she turned away even the company of her parents. When she wasn't reading the deranged musings of prison scum, she quietly panicked. She was so sick and afraid she couldn't even eat, and the lack of food for days made her dizzy.
The night before they set out to Coruscant, they'd gone to Padme's manor to sleep over, and her biological mother had to fight to get her dressed. Even afterwards, Leia refused to eat, laying like a limp doll on the floor. Luke, who had been eyeing her suspiciously (and rightfully so, since she still hadn't shown him the letters) couldn't convince her to talk. She sulked through breakfast, and the flight to Coruscant, and Padme had to pick her up and qoqi-march her through the transit station to their hotel.
Luke tried his hardest to distract her; he chatted about their teachers and his speeder and the upcoming elections, which she knew he didn't care one whit about. When even that didn't work as it usually did, he refused to leave her side and just sat with her, quietly. His company was a balm, but she was still miserable. When they checked into the hotel, Padme went down the lobby to meet with a friend of hers after leaving Threepio with them, and Luke's wealth of patience ran out. He deactivated the fussy droid and turned on his sister.
"What's wrong with you!" he shouted, pushing her off the couch she laid on, with her feet laying on the back cushions and her head hanging down, so that she fell directly on her head. "You've been like this all week!"
"Shut up, Luke!" she scrambled to her feet and shoved her brother back, and they quickly went from shoving to kicking and punching. Luke landed on top, because for all that Leia was quick to run her mouth he was still physically stronger than her.
"Stooop, get off you uncivilized brute! You stupid nerf!"
"No! I won't stop! And if I'm a nerf, well then you're ugly!"
She squirmed on her belly and kicked his back, and Luke shook her shoulders.
"That's a stupid comback," she huffed, completely out of breath.
"I don't need a good comeback if I won," and Leia could just hear his smirk. It infuriated her enough that she bucked, but he was immovable and held even tighter.
"Let me go," she hissed.
"Not until you tell me what you've been hiding from me," he said firmly.
"I haven't even seen you all week, how do you know I'm hiding anything?"
"So you are hiding something!" he said triumphantly, and got up. He offered her his hand with a stupid smarmy grin, and petulantly Leia smacked his hand away and rolled over on her side so she didn't have to face him.
"It's none of your business," she lied, thinking of the numerous letters addressed "Dear Luke." It was as much his business as hers. There were as many letters addressed only to her as there were only to Luke, sometimes to both of them, and suspicious gaps in dates where Leia suspected Anakin Skywalker wrote to Padme.
"You're lying," Luke said, and Leia hated that he could just tell every single time. For once Leia wished he could just turn off his stupid Jedi powers, or that she could do the same.
"So what if I am?" she buried her face in her arms, and hated immediately that her sleeves dampened with held-back tears. "It's not your business, like I said."
"Leia," Luke continued talking, how annoying, "Don't make me do this! I know you're hiding something, and that something has something to do with me...with us. Don't you trust me?"
"And what are you going to do? You aren't going to do anything!"
"Try me!" and then he ran off unerringly to her carry-on bag, where the letters were hidden.
I knew I should have burned them, she thought, panicked as she stumbled rising from her ball on the floor. "Luke stop! Those are girl things!"
"Like that's going to stop me!" he shouted, angry, and sure enough, her underwear, shifts, and garters didn't stop him at all. He threw them all over the fine carpet of the hostel. Leia knew the letters were shoved in a knee-high sock, rolled up like all her socks were, but he immediately picked up the one that hid them, unrolled it, and uncovered the neatly rewrapped stack of letters she'd hid from him.
He held the incriminating flimsiplast and frowned, and his lips pursed as if he were trying not to cry. Leia hated it; sometimes he could be such a crybaby and it always made her feel horrible.
"I knew it," he said, tossing it onto the bed between them. "I knew you found them! Why didn't you tell me?"
She glared into his pale eyes, huffing and folding her arms. He had no right to go through her things. And he wouldn't understand. Luke was like Padme. He was blind, and even all his Jedi sorcery wasn't enough to see a truth he didn't want to believe was true.
"It would've upset you—"
"Like that hasn't stopped you this whole time!" he shouted over, his face reddening. "You say that like it's supposed to mean something, like, like you haven't been making fun of me ever since we've begun visiting Father!"
"He's evil," Leia said, "A crazy, fascist, war criminal!
"Did he tell you that?" Luke jerked his head to the letters, "or did your Young Politick' Union? Your Peace Corps? Your Planetary Relocation and Refugee Youth Committee? I went to school just like you! I sat in the same history classes! I learned about the Clone Wars and the Imperial Coup and the Kaminoan Extermination the same as you did Leia! You're not better than me just because you think you know more!"
"It's not about that!" she shouted, finally losing her temper, stomping her foot. "It's not about that. Can't you feel it, Luke? If I can…"
Luke's eyes were the same color as Anakin Skywalker's, and that made them hard to look at, for her twin and her sperm donor were completely unalike. In the eyes of Anakin Skywalker there was an emptiness, like looking at a hololens. Something more was always looking back at her, unending. Something vast, wrathful, and full of despair. They burned.
But Luke's eyes were familiar and warm, and she could measure the swirls of emotion in them. Leia felt no fear looking into her twin's eyes, and his hurt felt like her own. That's why she knew he was aware of her feelings.
"I'm not stupid Leia," Luke said, "Maybe I'm not as smart as you, but I'm not stupid. I can sense the darkness in him the same as you."
"The way you act, I wouldn't have guessed," Leia huffed as Luke shuffled the papers, glancing over the dates and greetings.
"I want to know him. Even if he's not perfect, he wants me," Luke held the letters close to his chest, and Leia's heart panged at the sight. She wasn't sorry, though. She didn't want to visit Anakin Skywalker.
"Of course he does," Leia said bitterly into her knees, then immediately felt guilty for the small tendril of envy. "For your information, I know he's a murderer because he says it himself in those letters. Sandwiched in between all sorts of nonsense ranting about the Force and destiny and darkness and light."
Luke smiled slyly at her, but the expression faded quickly. "You and I know the Force is as real as anything, Leia. Or else you wouldn't be so scared."
"I'm not scared."
"Aren't you?" He picked out an earlier letter. "It's not a choice, you know. I'll never 'pick' him over you, or anything like that. He's my father, but you're my sister. You've always been there, and he wants to be here, so I think maybe he deserves a chance to try. But he'll never be more important to me than you."
"You were going to be a Jedi, like...like Anakin." Leia sniffled, her head pounding with the effort of holding back her tears. Luke had always been the crybaby, never her, and she hated that their roles were reversed. But Luke was right. It was scary.
"Well, I don't think being stuck in a scary old temple for the rest of my life sounds very fun," Luke shrugged. "Maybe being a Knight would've been cool, but the Jedi don't really do that anymore."
"It's not just that. The way he talks...the way he looks at us...the way he writes about us...it's crazy!" Leia shuddered. "Everyone who knew him says he was a good man, but I don't think they ever knew him at all."
Luke frowned. He didn't look at her, flipping quickly through the sheaf of flimsy. "This whole thing is kind of crazy, isn't it?" he mumbled.
"He doesn't explain anything," Leia said, "And he talks about us like he already knows us. But he doesn't and I don't know him. I thought I would understand him, somehow. I really hoped I would Luke, at least for you, I hope I could find something I didn't hate. But I don't think I can do it."
"I just wish you hadn't hidden the letters from me," Luke clenched his hands. "We could have figured it out together. Everyone is always hiding things and lying to me."
"I had to do it alone," Leia shrugged. "And I was right, because you don't understand how I don't want to forgive him."
"Why do you think I talk so much when we're there?!" Luke was visibly frustrated. "I know you don't want to be there. I try to distract him—"
"Well, you should've been on my side when I told Padme I don't want to go!" Leia snapped.
"Well, you should've just listened to me in the first place."
"What are you even talking about!"
"Remember when we called Master Kenobi and there were those plans to sneak into the Temple? Well, there was more on those datachips. A lot more."
He looked at her sadly, and then Leia's eyes widened when she realized what he meant. "So... you know?"
"He really did do it," Luke sounded exhausted. "At least what I think he went to jail for. There was no video, but there were sounds…"
As Leia opened her mouth to reply, the door slid open. Leia recognized the shuffling, slow gait of Padme. Luke threw himself on the bed, sitting on the letters and smiling innocently.
"You guys still aren't in bed?" Padme asked, looking weary. "Come on, go to sleep. Don't think I don't see you deactivated Threepio. It'll be a busy day tomorrow."
"Yes, Mother," Luke said. Leia glared. Padme ignored her silent tantrum.
The dread for the coming day settled on them like a shroud on a corpse.
The late morning of the seventh visitation was like every other visitation. Coruscant was loud, grimy, and cold. The hyperlanes were packed. Crowds and crowds of people went about their lives, above, and below.
The hotel they'd rented had been a mid-level hostel, so the senate buildings glimmered high above her head. She hated the very sight of it. She hated every step she took.
Madame Towleit came to pick them up, her beaten up state speeder the same as always.
"Hi Luke and Leia!" the Mon Cala had a sweet, if tired, smile for them as always. "And you must be Madame Naberrie. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
In the speeder, Luke sat close. His hand touched her, and his presence was an anchor. The world was falling away from Leia, spiraling. Her throat ached with choked back tears. She wanted to cry. Her tears hadn't helped her before, so she didn't.
"What if I just ran away?" she whispered to herself. Her eyes darted around the cab, but it was going too fast for her to jump out.
And all too soon, they were at the innocuous diner. Through the windows, the place was abandoned, as it usually was. Even though Knights of the Order were a thing of the past, people still fear 'jedi business' and would clear out at a whiff of it.
Like usual, he was in the last booth, and she couldn't see him from the windows.
"As this is a supervised visit, you'll have to wait here," Madame Towleit said apologetically to Padme, offering her hands for the two of them to hold.
The Mon Cala was somewhat heavyset and wearing small heels. If Leia ran, she couldn't catch her. She could feel that man in the diner, burning her, like walking past a flaming speeder crash. She had a bad feeling.
Leia hesitated too long; the social worker was an expert at corralling reluctant subjects. Her body followed and her mind was far, far away.
"Stay with me," Luke whispered, holding her hand. "Stay with me, Leia. I'm sorry. I understand how you feel now, and I'm sorry I didn't before."
Too late to do anything about it now, she thought, and she knew Luke caught the edge of it because he looked down at his feet.
"Thank you, Madame, but I can take them from here," a familiar voice, clipped but kind jolted the young girl from her thoughts.
"Master Jedi!" the social worker sounded surprised. "I didn't expect someone like you when they told me Padawan Nuyeda would be absent!"
They exchanged pleasantries as Luke and Leia exchanged glances, but Leia could feel only the heat of that frightful gaze. But Leia couldn't help but be relieved. She wasn't alone with him. Luke, who was dangerously enamoured with that murderer, even as he feared him, wasn't alone with him. And Master Kenobi could stop him; he already had before.
"You," Anakin spat, and Leia was grateful to see his hateful expression, for he had never looked less like Luke, "How dare you?"
"I'm only here to supervise the visit," the Jedi Master was unfazed. "Luke, Leia, I'll be right over there. Don't hesitate to call for me. You're safe."
Take me away, Leia thought anxiously, I don't want to be here!
But Obi-Wan Kenobi walked away. Leia breathed hard.
They sat and the silence weighed on the three of them, so tense a vibroblade couldn't cut it.
"All this fear," Anakin leaned forward, balancing his chin on his curled fist. "Has something changed since the last cycle I saw you?"
Luke shrugged, and as always, Leia was silent.
"Well, things have changed with me," he continued. "Your mother has seen fit to visit me at last. She told me many things I didn't know." He sighed. "I was so grateful that she wanted to see me, like you did. But you didn't, did you? And you don't want to be here now. You're afraid."
Still, Luke looked down, but Leia struggled to keep his eye.
"It's not unwise to fear the unknown," he offered, to no avail. Still, they ignored him. "I would like to think I am no longer a stranger to you. I would like to think that you know I love you. More than life. More than freedom."
"More than power?" Luke mumbled. At last, he looked up. "That's what you talk a lot about. Power. The Dark Side. Destiny. If we had none of those things, would you still care?"
Luke would know better than Leia. She spent every visitation trying her hardest to ignore the man before them, but Luke engaged, almost desperately. The hours of visitation flew by when they spoke, ending almost as soon as it started.
Identical eyes met. "The Force is with you, because you are my children." Anakin pursed his lips, "it isn't something you can inherit. It isn't something that can be measured and quantified and compared. The power of the Force lies in how well you listen, not how much you hear. In the past I was a weak coward, and I didn't understand—"
"Would you still care if Luke wasn't Force-sensitive?" Leia bit out, because that didn't answer Luke's question at all, and she knew what was at stake for her twin. The fear, the hurt lurked beneath his skin, restrained only by a hair trigger. The Organas didn't want him because he was Force-sensitive. It would be just as bad if Anakin only wanted him because he was.
"Oh?" Anakin smiled. It wasn't a nice one. "Only Luke? Do you think you are without the Force?" He cut her off as her face heated and she prepared to argue back. "But it is a valid question. To be tolerated only for your power...no. I have loved you both from the instant I knew of your existence. I loved you more than I had ever cared about anything. More than my mother. More than I loved Padme. But I thought I had killed you before you even had the chance to live. And it wasn't until you were four that I could truly understand the hand I had in your creation. When I saw you together, I could see all the pieces of your making, and I understood. I was a fool, and I was selfish, and I knew that our reunion one day was inevitable, and I promised myself I wouldn't kark it all up this time around."
His face was inscrutable, his tone even, even as he looked between the two. Then he smiled, and it was devastating. An expression that should have been reassuring sent only a spike of fear down Leia's spine. She had been hoping, even as she masked her fears with anger, that there was a chance that things wouldn't have to change, that Luke could make his peace and leave her to make hers. He was starting to see what Leia knew from the start, that Anakin Skywalker wasn't who he thought he was...
They would never be free of him. First contact had been made, and they were irrevocably infected.
"Did you do it?" True to his promise, Luke grabbed her hand in his sweaty palm under the table, as he distracted Anakin from Leia. "Did you kill them, the separatists, the Jedi, the Clones?"
"I destroyed my enemies," Anakin's lips tightened, "for the Republic I destroyed the Separatists. I was a Jedi. Did you think I had never executed a politician before? I was a Knight, not a pacifist. We called it aggressive negotiations back then, but on the losing side of a coup I suppose that makes you a war criminal." His eyes narrowed. "You know what I did. I found the Separatist leaders, and on the orders of the Chancellor, I executed them. We were making a new regime, a galaxy of order and peace. A perfect world to bring my children into. The separatists and the Jedi stood in the way of that. They had to be exterminated."
"Not that," Luke's voice was wretched with turmoil. "I know you did that. The whole galaxy knows you did that. Did you try to kill our mother? Did you try to kill us? How could you say you love us when you hurt us all so badly? How can you sit there and say that we're yours when you've hurt us more than anyone else ever has?"
"I wasn't trying to kill her—"
"So you didn't choke her? Throw her down from the Temple?" Leia stood, "You're really going to stand there and deny it?"
"I did, but you know nothing of the Dark Side," Anakin's fists clenched, an aborted move of violence. Luke frowned; a moue of disappointment curdled with disgust. He pulled Leia closer to him. If they'd both been standing, maybe he would've tried to push her back, but Leia wouldn't tolerate it. She forced her chin up through the heated, heavy atmosphere of shattered childhood dreams.
"But I do," Luke whispered, "I thought it was impossible to hurt someone if you really loved them."
"Son," Anakin sounded exhausted and ran his flesh hand through thick hair, "that's when it's the easiest. The Dark Side—"
"Don't try to blame the 'Force' because you're a violent, evil, pathetic—"
"The Dark Side," Anakin abandoned his fruitless efforts to appear non-threatening, looming over the two of them as he leaned forward like a shadow on the wall in waning light, "consumes all. In it, everything is absolute. Absolute power, absolute victory. Absolute freedom. And in return, it takes everything. Fear, pain, anger, passion, love. It is the anathema of everything natural. It is a perversion of the truth of the force. I thought she had betrayed me, and so I had to destroy her."
"But you chose to Fall," Luke's hand was shaking. "You disobeyed the Jedi."
"I chose to Fall," Anakin replied, "Because I thought only the absolute, unlimited power of the Dark Side would be enough to defeat the inevitability of what I foresaw. Predestination is the natural order of things. My visions are always true."
Anakin wrote frequently of his visions; in some of his letters he seemed to still be in the throes of them. Luke occasionally had dreams, small things, and so did Leia, though hers were fuzzier, more difficult to remember. An impression of knowing, rather than true foresight, more like the numerology her Mama so avidly believed in.
Leia shuddered. "You were right, you are a coward. You can't admit the truth. You didn't do it for us, and you didn't do it for Mother. You did it for power."
Anakin's expression was thunderous but considering. "May you never feel the cold lure of the Dark Side, Leia Organa, for you will surely fall." His tone was cool; not sneering, nor mocking, but tired and sad.
Leia, hearing the taunt for what it was, swelled up with rage, but Luke shifted his grip from her wrist to her forearm and dragged her from the booth. It was like stepping out of an oven, away from the heady, gelatinous heat of Anakin Skywalker's presence in the Force, buoyed up by Luke's cool freshwater embrace instead. His face was twisted in a grimace Leia had never seen before on him; he was usually so cheery, so bright, and even his anger tended to be short-lived. Leia had never seen him so mad, on his usually serene, smiling face, it looked wrong, like heartbreak.
"Master Kenobi?" he called, never taking his gaze away from their biological father, who had also risen, towering yet hesitant before Luke's softness as he never was before Leia's fire. "We're leaving."
"You're not," Anakin snapped. "Your time's not up yet."
"We are," Leia turned away, nose in the air and back to the pathetic prisoner behind them. "You're not my father. And you're not Luke's either."
"You're not leaving," his voice was low and dangerous, almost flat, a complete emptiness of expression that sent chills down Leia's spine, even as the Master Jedi intervened, pushing the two of them behind him with a graceful gesture. "If you walk away now, I will make it so you can never walk away again. You know the truth, Luke, Leia." Anakin spoke as if the Master Jedi that stood between them, a reassuring wall of light, a reprieve from the oppressive depth of feeling that Leia drowned in every second she spent by the man who called himself her father, didn't exist. "Lies will not save you from what you are."
"I thought you would be sorry," Luke's voice was small, but angry, genuine anger, not a mask for bone-deep fear like Leia's was. Leia was so used to being fearless, but now terror glued her tongue to the top of her mouth. Still, she mustered the strength to pull her twin away, step-by-step. "But you're not. You're a monster."
"I have done many things to bring peace and order to the galaxy," Anakin's approach was inexorable, even when Master Kenobi lit his bright blue lightsaber and held it on guard, "If that is a crime, then I am guilty, and I'm not sorry. But…what happened between Padme and I is between us. It is done. And it has no bearing on my love for you, my son, my daughter. I can see it, how they've turned you—"
"That's enough," Obi-Wan's lightsaber came up short between Anakin's eyes, a stroke nearly prepared to cut him in two. They stood in the door of the empty diner. Anakin had followed them, something he had never done before. Leia felt cold.
"You're my children," he was shouting, his voice having steadily risen throughout his tirade, "I would die for you. I have killed for you. I rotted in a cell for ten years for you because I thought your mother was raising you in peace!"
"And whose fault is it that she didn't?" Leia whispered, a half-formed thought escaped unbidden from her lips, but she knew instinctively Anakin heard what she said, if not from her lips than from her head.
And then they were outside. Madame Towleit's cool hands pulled Leia, fussing, but it was Padme's embrace that pulled her from the fugue of her thoughts.
"Why?" someone was saying it over and over. It took a while for Leia to realize it was Luke. But his lips weren't moving, and his eyes were closed as silent, angry tears trickled from them.
She had heard him through the Force.
Had a lot of social upheaval lately. Things unfortunately aren't going very well. Totally forgot to update. Thanks again to everyone who likes this enough to read. It's really fun to know people enjoy the drama the way I do!
One question though. I'm stuck between two endings for this- both of them are open endings, one is sadder than the other. So what do you think? Hopeful ending, sadder ending, post both? X _ X
Leave a review on your way out!
YellowWomanontheBrink
December 2, 2021
