A Single Thread
Part I: A New Hope
Act VII
Space was cold.
In her years of traveling with Bail Organa from one sector to another on his diplomatic journeys, Leia had grown accustomed to the chill of it, but she could remember the first time she had experienced a trip through hyperspace at the age of eight.
She'd been expecting the cold, her father had known Bail would be bringing her to Coruscant and had seen fit to warn her ahead of time.
While Alderaan was not exactly a hot planet like her father's homeworld of Tatooine, it was still fairly warm, and the shift in temperature had been drastic enough that Vader had made a point to suggest ahead of time that she remember to bring a warm blanket along, to cover up with when it got too cold.
Though he hadn't come right out and said it, Leia had gotten the feeling that someone had covered him up with a blanket on his first trip into space, as well, to keep him warm after leaving Tatooine.
And the sad longing she'd sensed in him left no doubt in her mind that it had been her mother.
"Here," Leia said softly, wrapping the blanket around Luke's shoulders for the second time.
She'd done so when they first boarded the ship, as well, but he'd shaken it off to run to one of the gun wells in order to take out some of the TIEs pursuing them, and now that they had entered hyperspace he was back in the hold again, brooding over Obi-Wan's death.
"Thanks," Luke said as he drew the blanket tighter around him. "I don't know why I'm so cold."
"Space is a cold place," Leia replied, sitting down beside him. "You come from a warm planet, so it's more noticeable."
"I guess," he murmured downcast. "I don't remember it being this cold on our way to Alderaan, though, before..."
When he trailed off, eyes lowering, Leia's heart ached for him, and she found herself compelled to lift a hand to smooth his tousled hair, feeling the same whispered spark deep within her that she had the very first time they touched, in the escape from the detention center.
"I'm sorry," she told him gently, and she meant it.
She was sorry that Luke was hurting, sorry that she couldn't spare him this pain, sorry that she didn't know how to make him understand...
There were a great many things she was sorry for at the moment.
"I just wish I could have done something," Luke muttered hoarsely.
"There was nothing you could have done," Leia said, repeating her earlier words of comfort. "There was nothing that anyone could have done."
That, she suspected, was neither truth nor lie.
Could she have prevented her father from killing his former Master? She had no idea, and she didn't particularly want to know the answer to that question, because it would have opened another question, one of an entirely different and darker nature.
If she could have stopped the duel, would she have done it?
There was no clear answer, no definite solution, because Leia didn't know how she was supposed to feel about Obi-Wan Kenobi's death, much less how she actually felt.
She had no grandfather, but Obi-Wan had been the closest thing to one that existed, really, having been the man to raise her father, to serve as both parent and guardian to young Anakin Skywalker as he grew up in the Temple on Coruscant. What little she knew about him was biased and filled with her father's bitterness, but she was certain that at one point, the two men had been fiercely devoted and loyal to one another, as much brothers as father and son.
But Obi-Wan had been too much of a Jedi, as decaying as the rest of the Order and too far gone to be brought about to see the truth, to realize that they were no longer following the will of the Force.
Her father's former Master had hunted him down and confronted him on Mufustar above the boiling magma rivers and the lava veins that wove their way across the surface of the volcanic planet, determined to stop him by any means necessary.
It had been Obi-Wan who put her father into the nightmarish prison of black armor.
And for that, Leia hated him.
"That man," Luke said suddenly, his eyes becoming focused and hard. "The one in the armor. That was Darth Vader, wasn't it? I can feel it."
"Yes," Leia confirmed hesitantly. "It was."
"He's the one who killed my father," Luke accused, gaze sharpening. "And now he killed Ben, too."
If not for her Force-training, Leia probably would have gaped at him Incredulously, instead of merely pressing her lips together in a smooth mask she'd perfected during her time in the Senate. "Your father?" she asked carefully.
"He was a Jedi Knight, like Ben," Luke replied, and some of the anger faded from his expression as he smiled sadly. "I never knew him, though, he died a long time ago. My Uncle Owen didn't like to talk about him, Aunt Beru said they just had too many differences, but Ben liked to talk about him. I think there were a lot of stories he wanted to tell me, about their adventures together."
Owen and Beru... those names were familiar... Leia knew she'd heard them mentioned before...
Lars.
That was it, Owen Lars was the son of Cliegg Lars, the man her grandmother Shmi had married while her father was at the Temple. Obi-Wan must have taken Luke to them for safekeeping the way Leia herself had been taken to the Organas, and now it made sense why the old Jedi had chosen to remain on Tatooine all these years.
He'd been watching over Luke.
"Your father," Leia said slowly, and she was amazed that her voice sounded so steady when her heart was pounding in her throat. "What was his name?"
"Anakin," Luke answered. "Anakin Skywalker."
For a moment, the entire galaxy seemed to stand still, frozen in place, and Leia forgot to breathe.
She had known, of course, somehow she had known from the very minute that Luke walked into her cell on the Death Star and told her he was there to rescue her.
That flash of connection, the way his presence seemed to fit perfectly with hers... it all made sense.
Her mother, Vader had told her when she was just a child, had died because of an accident of his making. It hadn't been intentional, but she had been killed, and he'd thought that their unborn child had been killed along with her, until he'd made the chance discovery that Leia's "adoption" wasn't legal and had been kept quiet, prompting a strange urge for him to check her bloodwork.
If Leia had survived, then why not a second child?
Why not Luke?
Twins, she thought in a daze, numb with shock. It would have to be twins.
"What?" Luke asked sharply, and too late she realized that he was staring at her, her expression must have betrayed her, that or his Force-sensitivity had picked up on some echo of the chaotic emotions churning within her. "What is it?"
Leia opened her mouth to speak, to tell him everything, but something stopped her.
What if she told Luke the truth, that Darth Vader had once been Anakin Skywalker, and Luke didn't believe her? What if he ran away to avoid it? What if, thanks to all the half-truths and lies he'd been fed by Kenobi, he turned on her or on her father?
She couldn't deal with this on her own, there were just too many possibilities and it hurt to think about them.
And how could she possibly tell Luke that everything he thought he knew about his family, about himself, was nothing but an elaborate ruse created by an aging Jedi Master in exile?
It would devastate him, and she couldn't bear to cause him that pain.
No, best that she wait and let her father handle this, he would know what to do. There was more to Darth Vader than just power and strength, he was also brilliant, and never failed to find a solution to a problem.
Vader would know what to do about Luke.
Until then, she would just have to dance around things carefully, and avoid saying something she shouldn't.
Swallowing hard, Leia gave Luke a faint smile. "Nothing," she lied, with the silky ease of a politician who knew how to make untruths sound real. "I was just thinking about my own father, that's all."
"Oh," Luke murmured. "I'm sorry. I forgot about Alderaan..."
"It's all right," Leia assured him.
At the moment she was a little upset with Bail, anyway. Her foster father must have known there were two, and he'd kept it from her, just as he'd tried to keep the truth about her real father from her. He had been in cahoots with Kenobi, after all, which meant that both men had played a part in keeping her and Luke apart, and she was furious because of it.
And when her father found out...
Vader had been outraged when he discovered her existence, that he had a daughter who had been stolen from him, she could only imagine how much angrier he would be, how much more betrayed he would feel, to learn about Luke.
"Don't worry, Princess," Luke told her, with grim determination. "Vader and the Empire will pay."
"My name is Leia," she replied quietly, distantly amused to hear him, of all people, addressing her like that. "And Tarkin will pay for what he did to Alderaan, yes, but Vader played no part in my homeworld's destruction."
"It doesn't matter," Luke said darkly. "I'm sure he's blown up dozens of other worlds."
"He hasn't," Leia snapped, before she could stop herself, and when Luke looked at her in surprise, she bit her lip, calling on the Force to drain her anger and using a calming technique that her father had taught her. "I'm sorry, I just don't like hearing Tarkin's evil trivialized," she amended quickly.
"I didn't mean to-"
"I know," Leia cut off his apology with a weak smile. "There's nothing to apologize for, Luke."
And there wasn't, he was just speaking his mind, following what he thought he knew to be the simple truth of things, but the truth, Leia knew, was anything but simple.
Hearing the anger in Luke's voice directed at her father, fueled by the lies that Obi-Wan Kenobi had told him, had touched a nerve. It was one thing to hear the Rebellion speak horribly of Darth Vader, to listen to the vicious comments and musings, but it was too much to hear it from Luke.
From her own brother.
Brother.
Oh, Force, she thought, the breath knocked out of her. I have a brother.
It was hard to wrap her mind around that, to fully understand it, but if she'd had any doubts at all, they would have been erased simply by looking at Luke. He had golden hair and blue eyes, like their father, and she had dark hair and eyes to match, like their mother, but she saw a mirror of herself when she looked at Luke, and it went deeper than just the physical features.
Did Luke see it, too?
Did he feel that connection, that pull, every time he looked at her?
"I just wish I'd had the chance to know my father," Luke murmured. "But now that Ben's gone, I've lost the only connection I had left to him. Well, except for this."
When he produced a silver lightsaber hilt, seemingly from out of nowhere, Leia blinked.
Her father's lightsaber.
Not the one he carried now, the one she'd learned how to use, but the one that he'd carried as a Jedi Knight, the one that he'd lost during his duel with Obi-Wan on Mufustar.
Kenobi kept it, Leia marveled to herself. Despite everything, he kept it all these years.
Suddenly, for no logical reason, she was struck by the image of the aging Jedi Master sitting in a small, dirty hovel in the middle of the desert, the winds howling just outside of the thin dirt walls, wasting away with the haunting memories as his only companion.
She could see it perfectly, could picture tired old hands opening a small case and removing a lightsaber hilt heavier in his hands than it really was, and running weak, but nimble fingers over every groove and notch.
Fingers reverently keeping up with its care, even as his own weapon rusted and aged.
"It was my father's," Luke said, not knowing that was completely unnecessary. "Obi-Wan thought that he would have wanted me to have it."
"I'm sure he would have," Leia managed a faint smile.
"When I hold it," Luke murmured. "I can feel him, you know? Sometimes it's like he's not really gone, he's just very far away and we can't find each other. I guess that sounds pretty crazy, huh?"
"No," Leia replied softly, blinking at the wetness in her eyes as she drew him into an embrace that was as much for her own comfort as it was for his. "No, that doesn't sound crazy at all."
Oh, Luke, she thought, her chest tightening. If you only knew.