With a jolt, Leia came back into herself. She blinked, momentarily confused. Then everything began to come back into focus. She looked around. The ground was littered with dead stormtroopers. Five, ten, twenty, she stopped counting. She began to breathe very quickly. Every single one of them bore lethal lightsaber wounds.
The room began to spin. Other than the assassin on Imperial Center, she had never actually used her lightsaber on anything other than droids. Blindly she reached into Bail's pocket and grabbed the chit before stumbling away as crippling waves of nausea rocked her core.
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
XxXxX
A torrent of anger crashed into Vader, breaking him out of his meditation.
Leia. He gasped as if he had been punched in the stomach.
He had never felt anything like this from his daughter. She wasn't just upset...that was a feeling Vader was unfortunately very familiar with. This was...rage. Frenzy. Ferocity. And the sensation of death permeated it like cold tendrils of fog. For the briefest moment it was like he could see through her eyes and he saw the dead stormtroopers. He saw the wounds. He knew what had happened.
He had to get to her. He had to stop her before...he didn't even know. Didn't even want to consider the possibilities.
Leia, what have you done?
XxXxX
Leia was half sprinting, half stumbling down the corridor away from the bodies towards the main hangar when she froze.
She felt him approaching, knew there was no way to avoid him. She could usually shield herself from him when she wanted, but not this time. He was walking straight towards her, it was like his very presence stripped away all of her barriers. She clenched her lightsaber tightly before forcing herself to relax. This was her father. He wouldn't hurt her. He couldn't...
She straightened up and reached for the Force to calm herself as she continued walking. There he was, standing in the doorway waiting to intercept her. He seemed pale, his eyes sunken and slightly bloodshot. He took a few steps toward her, arms hung loosely at his side. Leia stopped and planted her feet firmly, standing her ground.
"Father."
"Leia." Vader said quietly. "What have you done?"
Leia didn't answer. She never had been very good at reading her father, his presence in the Force seemed very murky, and her instincts were telling her to tread very carefully.
Vader took a step towards her and despite herself she automatically stepped back. "Did you kill those men in the corridor?" He asked.
She straightened, finding her voice at last. She knew that lying would do her no good. "Yes."
"Why?"
She took a deep breath. "Because I wanted to."
There. Let him figure that one out. She stuck her chin out defiantly.
Vader stared at her as though he didn't know her. Leia could see him tossing her words around in his head, trying to spin them so that he could explain her actions. Explain to who, though? The Emperor? Tarkin? Leia's blood boiled at the thought of her father having to explain anything to that lowly lecherous governor.
After a long moment Vader went to grab her arm. "Come on. You're going back to Imperial Center."
Leia jerked away from him and stared at her father in disbelief. "What?"
"I brought you here because I thought that you were ready to serve the Empire, but apparently I was wrong. You're going back to Imperial Center so I can try to fix the mess that you've made."
The thought of going back to Imperial Center, even without the Senate, was agonizing. Leia wasn't a politician. She didn't want to be shut away again, she wanted to do things!
Then, the truth hit her. The dread in her stomach grew as she looked up at her father and found him to be unrecognizable.
"It's you." She whispered. "It's been you all along."
"What are you talking about?"
"You've been the one standing in my way. I always tried to help you, but you never let me. I thought I was weak, but I'm not, am I?"
"I don't…"
"There is more to the Force than you've been telling me, isn't there?" Leia challenged her father. "How else could I do the things that I've done and still struggle with the dark side?"
When Vader didn't answer, she reached into her boot and pulled out the disc. "How else could I have had this the entire time and you never knew?"
For the first time in her life, Leia succeeded in shocking her father. His eyes widened and he took a threatening step towards his daughter. "Give me that."
"No."
"And what exactly are you going to do with them?"
"I'm taking them to the rebellion."
Until she said it, Leia hadn't fully realized what her plan was. But she was going to do this. Nobody else was going to die, not if she had anything to say about it.
"No, you're not."
Leia gave a maddened laugh. "Who is going to stop me? You?"
"That's not something that I want to do."
"I'm not sure it's something you can do." Leia shot back.
"Leia, it's alright. Maybe I should have eased you into things a little slower. Your last few days have been traumatic. I understand." Vader sighed. "But you don't know what you're talking about. Now, for the last time, give me those plans."
Leia slipped the plans back into her boot. "You'll have to take them from me, my lord."
Vader's hand drifted to the lightsaber hanging from his belt. The red lightsaber ignited with a hiss. "Leia, don't make me do this."
Leia searched within herself ready to banish the fear, but she found there was none. He had more experience but she was younger, more agile. She had trained with him for years and knew his fighting style as well as her own. And there was something...she couldn't quite identify it, but she could feel it. She could beat him. She was stronger than him. She thought now that maybe she always had been, but she had always held herself back, never believed in herself But maybe the Force was different from what her father had always taught her. Maybe she didn't need the darkness to be powerful. Maybe there was a way to use the dark and the light to be strong. To actually do something, make things the way that she wanted. She backed up and ignited her lightsaber. The cerulean blade hummed ominously.
You're not ready for this.
"Stay out of my head!" She growled.
Leia looked straight into her father's eyes. She felt calm. She felt powerful.
She raised her lightsaber and attacked.
Darth Vader relied on his larger size to overwhelm his opponents. He immediately swung down hard, forcing Leia to parry from below. She gritted her teeth at the effort but managed to throw him off and quickly sidestepped out of his path before doing a backflip to get herself out of his immediate range. She then immediately launched herself back at her father and swung at his neck, a move that he easily blocked. Vader twisted his wrists so his blade forced hers away from him and she spun with her lightsaber. Vader then tried to catch her from behind but she twisted to meet him and then leapt away.
Vader raised his lightsaber high in the air and circled his daughter. She too raised her blade but refused to meet him. She tried to summon the raw emotion she had felt in the corridor with the stormtroopers. This time, Leia was sure she could control it and use it against her father. She remembered the mind probe and the fear in Bail Organa's eyes. She remembered the feeling of Alderaan exploding. Finally, she remembered the pain and horror she'd felt coming from Bail as he died. All of these things had transpired because her father had allowed it, and the more she remembered the more she saw her father as her enemy and her anger grew.
She rushed her father in a frenzy she'd never known. Blow after blow, barely conscious of what she was doing, she swung at her father. Sparks showered around them as red met blue again and again. She managed to beat her father back when she heard his voice in her head again, taunting her.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Leia hesitated. She felt the Force warning her of the incoming blow, but she was too slow. The hilt of her father's lightsaber slammed into her chin, momentarily stunning her. Vader reached out and flung Leia against a wall. She collapsed and lay motionless on the ground.
Vader sighed. He advanced on his daughter as she moaned and stirred feebly. "Leia, it doesn't have to be this way." He coaxed her. "We can go back to Imperial Center. Nobody has to know what you've done."
It was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes flew open and she leapt to her feet.
All of a sudden Vader stepped back in alarm. "Where did you get that?"
For a moment Leia was warily confused until she followed his gaze to the japor snippet that must have fallen out of her tunic when she fell. "I'm told that it belonged to my mother." She said fiercely as she tucked it back away. She was still slightly woozy from being slammed into the wall, and held her lightsaber across her body defensively.
Vader reached out his hand. "Give it to me."
"Never." She hissed. "You took her away from me once. I'm not going to let you do it again."
And there it was. All of the anger, frustration, and sadness of nineteen years of existence suddenly became focused. Leia had been robbed of a mother, had not even known her name, and had been left as the outsider in her family. Had Vader done something to Padme? Images of her mother dying at Vader's feet filled her mind. A lightsaber through the heart, suffocating as the Force closed her throat...the possibilities made Leia's blood run cold.
Vader's face twisted into a mask of hatred and he charged his daughter. He swept low, aiming at her feet. She clumsily leapt over the blade and immediately turned and swung again. Vader quickly twisted and blocked her. She pulled back, instinctively wanting to aim for his unprotected abdomen but the Force warned her otherwise. Vader swung back in the same direction she had just blocked, forcing her to twist and counter a blow that could have easily severed her spine.
There was a horrible tingling sensation radiating down her legs from being thrown into the wall, and the sleeve of her tunic was singed where she'd let Vader get too close. She was also fighting to keep from breathing heavily, lest her father see how tired she was. Her newfound confidence was fading. As angry as she was, Vader was still her father, and her reluctance to truly hurt him was costing her. Vader, on the other hand, was getting more ferocious in his attacks. She sensed his rage and she knew it was directed at her. She had seen her father like this before; he might very well kill her and not realize it until later.
If I don't end this soon, I may not get out of here alive.
She looked around frantically. Throwing something at Vader wouldn't work, there was nothing large enough to work, and he would surely be able to deflect it too quickly for her to be able to get away. There really wasn't anything in the corridor for her to work with, until…
Her eyes followed the path past Vader to where it forked. The right side continued the main hallway, but the left veered off to what looked like it could be a minor service corridor. What caught Leia's attention was the hatch that was wired into the doorway to the smaller corridor. If she could get past that hatch and lock it even for a few moments, it would buy her enough time to get away from her father.
She looked back at Vader and raised her lightsaber. She somersaulted over him and forced him to block her blow from above. As soon as she landed on his other side she kicked him as hard as she could in the stomach, sending him flying backwards.
Pain shot up her leg but she forced herself to keep moving. She sprinted to the service corridor and attempted to close the hatch, but it wasn't working. She could hear her father swearing behind her and she jabbed the buttons frantically before stabbing the control panel with her lightsaber. The hatch closed.
For a moment, Leia stopped to catch her breath. But then she realized that the center of the door was getting warm to the touch and beginning to glow orange, and she knew that she didn't want to be around when the Sith lord got through that door.
Turning, Leia ran down the hallway as fast as she could, without a solid plan of what her next move was going to be.
She finally made her way into the hangar in a panicked haze, keeping her head down. She wasn't fully conscious of where she was going until she dared to look up and she zeroed in on a TIE fighter.
She walked quickly up to the fighter dock and began punching in the access codes. Her hands were shaking so badly that the screen flashed red. Access denied.
Leia swore. She entered the codes again, this time correctly. The gate opened and she climbed up the ladder to the platform. She began rapidly running the preflight checks, knowing that once they were done she'd only have a few moments before her unauthorized departure was detected.
Suddenly, Leia felt her brother coming. She only worked faster.
"Leia!" She dimly heard Luke calling her from behind.
She ignored him.
"Leia!"
She could feel the Force rippling as he reached out to her, trying to figure out what she was doing. She gave him a mental shove and hit the computer screen, willing it to work faster. But Luke persisted, and she could feel him trying to calm her down.
This time, Leia would not be placated.
She began to climb into the cockpit of the fighter when an invisible force suddenly ensnared her wrist, forcing her to stop. She whirled around to see Luke reaching his hand out to her, holding her tight. Leia suppressed her growing panic and fought back. Her mouth twitched as she struggled against her brother.
Luke! Let me go!
There was a beep. The preflight checks were complete. Immediately an alarm pierced the air, alerting the control bay to her activity.
There was instant chaos. Storm troopers scrambled and began to set up heavy ranged blasters pointed in Leia's direction. But then the men closest to her looked up and recognized her and tried to call the others off. Knowing that she likely only had moments before things really got out of hand, Leia forced her attention back on her brother.
Luke!
Finally, she heard him whisper,
You can't leave me!
From across the hangar the twins' eyes met, and Luke thought he saw the ghost of a smile flash across Leia's face.
I'm sorry.
And she pushed.
Luke flew backwards and into the corridor. Leia pointed at the blast doors and they slammed shut, locking him out. One final glance jammed the door controls and she climbed into the waiting TIE fighter and closed the hatch.
She could still hear the alarms blaring in the background and forced herself to block them out. She turned on the power and hit the accelerator. With a loud roar her TIE fighter rocketed out of the hangar and into space, leaving a slew of stunned Imperials behind her.
XxXxX
Leia was exhausted. All she really wanted to do was switch the TIE fighter to autopilot and let her mind rest, but she had just enough rationality left to know better.
"If the time comes, you should know where to go."
Yavin 4. He had given her the location of the rebel base. If Leia had been allowing herself to feel anything she might have cried. Bail must have known what Leia had refused to see: he knew he was never going to make it off of that battle station alive. He had prepared her to finish what he started.
So she knew where to deliver the chit. However, TIEs were only built for short range fighting, and a quick glance at her data screens told her she'd never get to Yavin 4 on her own. She had to find a bigger ship.
The closest planet popped up on her screen. Anoat. There wasn't much there anymore except for several battalions of Imperial troops and Leia was sure the days of her relying on her Imperial connections were over. If she was going to do this, she was going to have to fly under the radar.
Another planet popped up. This one was Tatooine. There wasn't much there either and she was about to skip to another planet when she paused.
According to the database it was small - mostly desert - and sparsely populated. The Hutts had a strong presence there, but the Empire didn't have any quarrels with the Hutts. Even better, it was home to several large space ports. She knew she'd be stretching her TIE's capabilities, but she thought she could make it. The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.
She punched in the coordinates for Tatooine and set the ship to autopilot. The stars around her stretched into a blur as she made the jump to lightspeed and left behind the only life she had ever known.