"New Discoveries"

By EsmeAmelia

AN: Hey there! No, I'm NOT dead - I've just been so BUSY with NaNoWriMo and schoolwork.

Chapter 2

Luke blinked, as if trying to shake away a dream. "Leia Organa...the Leia Organa?"

"Do you know of any others?" said Ben.

"Well...no...but...are you sure she's staying with us?"

"Why would I tell you this if I wasn't?"

Luke was silent, his bottom lip curling, rubbing fresh wetness on his top lip. Leia Organa...the daughter of Queen Breha Organa of Alderaan and her husband Senator Bail Organa...but it wasn't just her parentage that made her famous. She was the youngest xenoarcheologist in the known galaxy, no older than Luke - but from the stories he had heard, she had the skills of someone twice her age.

A strange feeling of embarrassment crept into the pit of Luke's stomach. He'd be meeting a xenoarcheologist who was his age. A further reminder that he was still living like a child even though he was almost twenty. What would she think of that?

"Shouldn't you be getting back to work?" Ben inquired suddenly.

"What? Oh...right!" Luke sprang up from his seat and dashed back to the kitchen for another monotonous day of work.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Luke's stomach was turning somersaults when he got home to the moisture farm. As he climbed out of his speeder, his legs felt like they had left their muscles back at work. Leia Organa...he would be meeting Leia Organa. Living with Leia Organa.

He wondered how Ben had managed to get his aunt and uncle to allow this, being fairly convinced that Beru and especially Owen wouldn't approve of a stranger staying with them without outside persuasion. But then, maybe they too were struck with admiration for the young explorer.

He stared out at the horizon, squinting at the two suns gradually setting, turning the sky orange and red. It was his habit to do so every night, though he had no idea why. He didn't even find the Tatooine sunset particularly pretty. Maybe it was because every time he saw those two suns set meant another day when he hadn't yet seen a single sun setting. Visitors to Tatooine would comment about how strange it was to have a pair of suns in the sky, but Luke had never known anything different. For him, a sky with one sun would be amazing, but perhaps he was destined never to see one.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Luke entered the dining room to find his aunt and uncle already well into eating dinner - with a young woman sitting between them. She had brown hair tied back behind her head, eyes nearly the exact same color as her hair, and when she saw Luke entering, a wide, charming smile.

"Hello there," she said, stimulating Luke's aunt and uncle to take notice of him. "You must be Luke." She stuck her hand out at him even though it was a bit awkward to shake hands over the table. "Hi, I'm Leia."

"Uh..." Luke grasped her hand between two fingers. "...hi."

"Sit down, Luke," said Beru. "Don't make our guest uncomfortable."

Luke obeyed, sitting across the table from Leia, feeling her eyes studying him. In an effort to ease the jumping in his stomach, he looked over at his uncle, whose head was down, staring at his food, as if trying to close himself away from all that was happening.

"So...how long are you going to stay here?" Luke said lamely.

Leia's smile didn't waver. "As long as it takes." Her voice was full of vigor. "We're on a very important mission here. You might not be aware of it, but this planet could hold the most important secret in the known galaxy."

Luke snorted. "I think you've got this confused with some other planet. Here you'll just find sand, sand, and more sand."

Leia's eyebrows narrowed. "Which one of us is the xenoarcheologist, you or me? Surely you must know about how Darth Vader vanished after he killed Emperor Palpatine? Or did you sleep through history class?"

"I was alive for it," said Luke. "I'm not that young."

The xenoarchiologist raised a brow, as if she were a teacher trying to calm a short-tempered student. "Well, as you know, no one knows what happened to him after the historic duel with his master, nor do they know why he didn't proclaim himself the emperor after defeating Palpatine. It's widely believed that he took a blow from Palpatine and died himself as the result, but some experts disagree."

Luke's eyes widened - he had never heard of any speculations that Vader might have survived the duel.

"There is some evidence to suggest that yes, Vader was injured in the battle, but perhaps not as critically as generally believed," Leia continued. "It's been conjectured that maybe after the battle, he fled to his home planet, where he died in solitude from his injuries."

Luke pursed his lips. "His home planet?"

Leia gave a large, snapping nod. "Yes," she said. "Tatooine."