Two

"You're acting like a baby."

The accusation smarted. A white-hot burst of anger pushed its way up into Leia Skywalker's throat with her brother's harsh admonition. She bunched her fists against the reflexive impulse to Force push him directly into the lake just beyond. It wasn't necessarily his superior tone that irritated her but that he was so quick to wave aside her unease as if her intuition meant nothing to him. That was the thing that infuriated her. But mostly, she was confused and disappointed by his response altogether. Luke didn't usually minimize her feelings.

Of all the people in her life, the legion of adults who were frequently so swift to write off her keen sensitivity as wild imagination or "misunderstanding," Leia had always been able to count on her brother lending credence to her feelings. Others might dismiss her, but he would not. He would understand better than anyone. So, she was disheartened and stunned when it became evident that he wasn't inclined to entertain her niggling doubts about their father even when he knew that her intuition rarely failed her.

What was worse, he wanted to silence her completely! Every time she raised any concern to him, Luke would instantly shut her down. The more she tried to push, the more he dug in his heels. Much like their mother, he was too preoccupied with basking in the celebratory glow of their father's miraculous return to give any regard to the warning bells clamoring around them.

Either he couldn't feel the approaching storm that was gathering around their family…or he was flat out refusing to acknowledge it. Considering that she knew her brother even better than she knew herself, Leia suspected that it was more the latter than the former. Luke had practically admitted as much to her the last time she'd attempted to engage him in conversation about it.

"The Empire is dead now, Leia, and our father is home," he'd told her after she had pressed him about their father's possible secrets, "Leave it alone. I don't care what his secrets are! All I want is for us to be a family again!"

As much as it aggravated her, Leia couldn't blame Luke entirely for being so willfully blind. He had spent practically his entire life devising a plan to find Anakin Skywalker and bring him home, dreaming about him. His need to be reunited with their father had almost bordered on obsession, but Leia had never once dissuaded him from his pursuits as everyone else did. In fact, she had encouraged him to keep pushing until he found the truth. And he did. Eventually, he succeeded. He found their father at last…but after that, everything began to change.

It had started subtly enough at first that Leia didn't really notice in the beginning. Everyone was so happy to have Anakin back. She was happy, so it didn't matter then that everything and everyone seemed to revolve around him. Then gradually, their family dynamic shifted further.

She and Luke spent less time together. She and her mother talked less. They both were perpetually preoccupied with what her father wanted and needed. Which was understandable after such a prolonged absence from his family, but Leia couldn't understand when he had suddenly become the deciding factor in what they did and did not do as a family. And there were other things that unsettled her.

The way her father felt in the Force was…different, dynamic in a way that she had never experienced from another Force user. She had only ever experienced that once before in her life. On Mortis. Her father's Force signature reminded her very strongly of the beings on Mortis. And though she still didn't have a full understanding of who those beings had been or what they were, she recognized enough to understand that the power they'd wielded was unfathomable.

But when she tried to share her theory with Luke, he hadn't wanted to listen to that either. From his standpoint, Mortis was gone and everything that had happened to their father on that planet was no longer relevant. That was all in the past and Luke wanted to concentrate only on the future. Now that he had been reunited with Anakin Skywalker, he would fight to the death before he allowed anything to part him from his father again. Leia wasn't even sure Luke could survive losing their father a second time. It was no wonder then that he didn't want to hear about anything that might raise that possibility now.

He adored Anakin Skywalker. He didn't want to lose him. Leia could certainly empathize with those emotions too. She felt a similar fierce protectiveness towards their mother and was struggling with that same fear.

In contrast, however, Leia's own feelings for Anakin Skywalker were a bit murkier than that. She was unquestionably drawn to him. There was no doubt about that. And how could she not be? She had spent her lifetime yearning for a father, mourning the void that he had left in her life and imagining what it would have been like had he remained in it. As she grew up, she had listened intently to the stories from Rex, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and her grandmother, building up the visage of Anakin Skywalker in her mind until he was something almost larger than life. He wasn't simply a man, but a legend…someone she could never truly touch. Meeting him in person, as terrifying as it had been, had not been a disappointment for her. Anakin Skywalker was everything that she had imagined he would be.

Consequently, there was an indelible part of Leia that loved him. The inclination was instinctive, almost chemical. She was an extension of him, a direct reflection of all he was and all he could be. They were tethered to one another in an unbreakable way. But more than that, Leia had been given the opportunity to peer into the deepest recesses of her father's soul. She had grazed the edges of the darkest, most chilling parts of him, and she had been blinded by his incredible light. She had glimpsed a side of her father that very few knew existed. She firmly doubted that even her mother knew that side. It was impossible not to feel connected to him on a deep, primal level after an experience that profound.

But despite everything she had seen and felt on Mortis that day, Leia still didn't have a firm grasp on who her father was as a person. Anakin Skywalker largely remained an enigma to her. She could sense that he was a man with closely guarded secrets, and that there were truths about himself that he did not want his family to know. He was keeping something from them. And it was his unwillingness to share those secrets that made Leia wary. As much as she loved him, she mistrusted him as well.

While her mother and brother seemed content to blithely accept the fact that there were things about Anakin Skywalker that they did not and could not know, Leia was not so quick to conform to that idea. She refused to accept such boundaries, especially after having had the veil briefly lifted for her. She also chafed at the thought of anything about Anakin Skywalker being off limits to her when she considered how much he had unintentionally disrupted her life thus far. As far as she was concerned in her righteous, ten-year old viewpoint, he owed her complete transparency after that.

In short order, he had already usurped her two closest relationships. Suddenly, Luke no longer trusted her insight and her mother was too preoccupied with him to spare Leia a second glance. Even now, instead of lingering at the shoreline with her and her brother, Padmé Skywalker was currently splashing around in the lake with Anakin, laughing freely in a way that Leia had never heard before. Each time her mother's gleeful cries pierced the air, Leia would feel a confusing blend of joy and jealousy.

"He makes her really happy," Luke observed softly, seeming to discern her silent thoughts as she stared at their parents, "Why would you want to ruin that?"

Leia regarded him sadly. "Is that what you think I'm trying to do?"

"I don't know! You're always like this! You can never leave well enough alone! For once in your life, don't stir up trouble!"

"Something is changing," Leia maintained with an obstinate glower, "Stop pretending that you don't feel it! I know you do!"

Luke jerked his gaze aside, his jawline knotted with equal obstinance. He skipped a pebble across the billowing surface of the water and watched the rock skip across several times before it finally sank. He refused to meet her eyes when he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "I think you're jealous."

"I am not jealous!" Leia denied hotly.

He snorted and punctuated his scoff with a dramatic eye roll. "You are so! You can't stand that you're not her favorite anymore!"

"That is not true!"

"It is so! There's nothing wrong with having your own room, you know! You're old enough."

Leia jerked her chin to a haughty angle. "It has nothing to do with that."

"Yes, it does. You've been in a snit ever since. It's been three days already! Get over it!" Luke looked at her then and, when he noted the faint, mortified color that stained her cheeks, he abruptly softened his tone. "What did you expect, Leia? They're married. It was never going to stay the same."

"It's not just about the room," Leia confessed in a mournful tone, abruptly dropping all pretense, "It's about everything. It's all changing. We didn't even talk about it! She just decided and that was that!"

"Yeah, that sounds like Mom alright. Welcome to my world."

Their mother's sharp peals of laughter pierced the air once more and both children glanced up in time to see their father hoisting her aloft and threatening to dunk her beneath the surface. She was making an admirable show of sternly admonishing him against carrying out the impertinent act, but her incessant giggles were ruining the effect. In the end, it didn't matter. Their father hardly seemed devoted to the idea of soaking her anyway because soon enough he became distracted with kissing her instead. Both Leia and Luke self-consciously jerked the gazes aside as their laughter gradually faded and those kisses became more intimate. But while Luke shook his head wryly and smiled over his parents' obvious affection for one another, Leia scowled.

"It's all his fault," she muttered, "Nothing has been the same since he came back."

"Leia! Don't say things like that!" Luke burst out, frowning at her with a mixture of disappointment, astonishment, and fear, "You make it sound like you don't want him here…like you wish we had never found him!"

Sensing his anxious dismay, Leia was quick to reassure him, her irritation replaced with a sisterly need to soothe his hurt feelings and repair any burgeoning disharmony between them. "I don't wish that, Luke," she whispered, "I would never wish that."

"That's not how it sounded. I don't understand you. Why do you hate him so much?"

"I don't hate him," she insisted softly, genuinely, "But I don't know him either. Why does everything have to be different just because he's here now?"

"Change doesn't have to be bad," Luke told her.

"What about the rest of it?" she pressed him, "He's keeping a secret from us. I can feel it."

"Leia, stop it! You're not entitled to know everything!"

"Who says I'm not?"

She favored him with a hard look, one that he had seen countless times in the past. It was an implacable, tenacious glare that never failed to make him shudder. Whenever Leia had that look, it was almost guaranteed that she was going to do something impulsive and monumentally stupid, and he was going to be left picking up the mess she left in her wake. Luke groaned inwardly.

"Please don't do something foolish. I'm begging you…"

"Why is it foolish to want the truth?"

"But he's not lying, Leia!" Luke ground out from between clenched teeth, "He loves us! He loves her! I know you can feel that! That's what's true and that's all that matters! So, drop it! I mean it! I won't forgive you if you ruin this for me."

Leia's anger flared anew, accompanied this time by a deep sense of betrayal. That was yet another thing her father had stolen from her. She didn't even have Luke unwavering loyalty anymore. Now, he looked at her as if she were the enemy, as if she meant to take something precious away from him, and he had never looked at her that way before. They had protected and championed each other their entire lives and now they were on opposite sides of everything because of him! Frustrated tears welled in her eyes with the realization, but she stubbornly blinked them back because she refused to let him know just how deeply he had wounded her.

"Fine," she agreed, her features impassive, "I won't say anything else to you about it."

Belatedly recognizing his error, Luke fruitlessly tried to call back his bitter words. He nudged her with his shoulder. "Don't be that way. You know that I didn't mean it like that."

She refused to look at him. "Yes, you did." She knew that he wanted to say more and that he was probably poised on the verge of begging for forgiveness that she would not easily grant, but their mother chose that moment to call out to them and question their reason for loitering on the beach. With a wide smile, she eagerly beckoned them to join her in the water.

"We should go," Luke said.

"You go. I'm going to stay here and collect shells."

He groaned her name in woeful protest. "What am I supposed to tell them? It will be weird if I go over there without you."

Leia shrugged. "Tell them I don't feel like swimming."

Luke responded to that claim with scoffing skepticism. Much like him, Leia had a natural affinity for being in the water. The life they had lived the past eight years had afforded them very little time for leisurely swimming. So, when the opportunity arose, neither of them were inclined to pass it up. Until now. Naturally then, Luke questioned her about it.

"I just don't want to," she mumbled.

"Since when?"

"Since now. Don't worry about me. Go have fun."

He was reluctant to leave her. She could tell by the way he slowly waded into the water and kept glancing back at her with a hopeful expression, silently pleading with her to change her mind. But eventually he yielded. She watched with a sullen pout as he swam out gracefully to meet their parents. Their voices carried over to her across the water as they both voiced their curiosity over why Leia had not chosen to join him. Her mother appeared to take Luke's offered explanation at face value, but her father immediately glanced in her direction, his features clouded with speculative concern as he regarded her. Leia met his eyes in an unflinching stare.

She could feel him probing the edges of her conscious mind in a quest for answers, but she was steadfast in maintaining her mental shields against him. Still, she had the clear sense that he could effortlessly push past them like gossamer webbing if he wished. She prepared herself to resist him, but he made no move to forcefully invade her mind. Instead, to her surprise, he meekly retreated, a decision that left her more confused about him than ever.

Leia expelled a shuddering breath, and deliberately averted her gaze from his. She could feel his disappointment. It permeated her being like a heavy shroud, weighing down her heart with indescribable emptiness, but she angrily shook it off. She didn't want to be softened by his obvious sadness but, at the same time, she felt intensely guilty for feeling that way about him at all.

It was impossible to reconcile her feelings for him, this man with whom she shared an astonishing bond but who was essentially a stranger to her. She felt drawn to him and repelled at the same time. No one had prepared her for that. No one had told her that it would be possible to love and need Anakin Skywalker beyond comprehension but also despise him with equal thoroughness. And, because she had been so unprepared, Leia was ill-equipped to navigate and compartmentalize those conflicting emotions. They confused and frightened her. They filled her with crippling doubt and made her feel unworthy.

Under different circumstances, she might have confided her unsettled feelings to her mother, but that was hardly an option for her now. Padmé would never understand Leia's reservations. She was just as desperate to recapture the past that she'd lost with her husband as her son. And Luke certainly couldn't serve as Leia's confidante either. He had made it painfully clear that he would not countenance anything that threatened the precious balance of their newly established family dynamic. He finally had what he had always wanted, and no one would take it away from him.

Leia fervently wished for grandmother's guidance. Shmi Skywalker was kind and wise and always forthright. Leia had no doubts that her grandmother would listen intently to her concerns without judgment. She wouldn't silence Leia as Luke had done, and Shmi wouldn't close her ears to Leia's misgivings as Padmé was sure to do. Leia could trust her grandmother to be objective. She had been the only person to give Luke and Leia the unvarnished version of their father…a man who lived and loved passionately but who was also plagued by many demons.

As a result, Leia knew with certainty that her grandmother would always tell her the truth, even if that truth was difficult to hear. Leia had always respected that quality in her grandmother, and she desperately needed that candor now. But Shmi Skywalker was far away on Tatooine, and Leia had never felt more alone in her life.

Further out in the lake, Luke was currently engaged in a race with their mother while their father stood as judge, and Leia observed them with mournful eyes. She imagined that this was the closeness they had once shared before her father's disappearance, before she had been born. To Leia, they appeared to be the perfect family unit. As she watched them, it was difficult for her to determine where exactly she was supposed to fit into that picture now. She was beginning to wonder if she could even fit at all.

Lost in her deeply morose thoughts, Leia started down the meandering beach path, moodily kicking aside the heavy, wet sand with her bare toes in a half-hearted attempt to comb for shell deposits and calm her thoughts. She didn't doubt that her father and Luke would easily sense any disquietude within her, and she didn't need either one of them probing her. She wanted to be left alone and was eager to create some much-needed distance.

Beyond her shoulder, she heard her mother call out, "Leia, not too far! Stay where I can see you, please."

"Yes, Mother," Leia called back dutifully, though she did not turn to acknowledge Padmé when she did.

She could feel her mother's anxious stare lingering on her back, sense Luke tentatively nudging her across the Force to ask if she was alright. Even her father returned, enveloping her with his presence, awaiting her permission to wrap her in his protective aura. But Leia adamantly shook their silent concern aside and kept on walking, determined to be on her own.

As was her way, Leia didn't quite stay in her mother's line of sight as she had been counseled to do, but instead ventured much further down the beach so that the sounds of her family's cheerful laughter became muted. She wasn't trying to be disobedient, though she knew that would be the likeliest assumption. The truth was that it hurt too much to be close to her family right then, and she didn't want them to see her cry.

"Are you lost, my dear?"

Leia jerked upright suddenly, unnerved not only to be found sobbing quietly to herself, but also because she had been completely unaware of the old woman's approach. She wasn't usually so insensible to her surroundings. Self-conscious and mildly irritated with herself, Leia deftly scrubbed away the tears that stained her cheeks and regarded the woman with a blank expression.

She appeared harmless enough. Wizened. Gray-haired. Her delicately petite frame stooped with age. But her gray eyes were keen, vibrant, and alight with rolling vitality. Leia found them mesmerizing, compelling in a way…

"My mother told me to be wary of strangers," she said.

The old woman smiled at her kindly. "Your mother is a very wise woman, child." She glanced around Leia curiously, as if she expected someone to materialize from beyond her shoulder. "Surely she hasn't left you to fend for yourself," she ventured.

Leia hitched a guarded glance back in the direction from which she had come. "No. She's further down the beach," she confirmed, "She could easily hear me scream too."

The woman chuckled at the veiled implication. "I mean you no harm, my child. You looked distressed, and I was concerned. I meant no offense."

As the old woman started to shoulder past her and continue on her way, Leia was assaulted with a wave of guilt over her brusque behavior. She sighed in chagrin and mumbled a rueful apology. "Please forgive me, ma'am. I was very rude to you," she acknowledged.

"You needn't offer me an apology," the woman replied, "But I should like to offer my assistance. Shall I fetch your mother on your behalf?"

Leia shook her head. "She can't help me. No one can."

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"You wouldn't understand," Leia muttered.

"You may be surprised. Sometimes it helps to talk to a stranger," the woman said, "Someone without a vested interest, who will listen to you without judgment…"

Leia regarded her with round eyes, marveling over how the woman seemed to easily perceive what she needed without her needing to say a word. "You're Force sensitive, aren't you?" she whispered in awed understanding, "Were you a Jedi?"

The woman grunted a laugh. "I was once many things," she replied, "Now I am but a lonely, old woman."

"We have that in common then. But I'm a lonely, little girl instead."

"Why would you feel lonely, child?"

"My family is changing," Leia confessed, "It's too fast for me. I'm not ready."

"Families can be difficult," the woman agreed, "They can be the source of your greatest joy…and also your greatest pain."

Sensing the deep anguish in the woman and empathizing with her because it resonated with her own, Leia asked gently, "Did you lose your family in the war?"

"My family was lost to me long ago, and now they are forever beyond my reach." She offered Leia a disarming smile. "But we are not discussing my troubles right now. We are discussing you."

"My father was lost to us for many years too," Leia explained, "But now he has come home."

"And this displeases you?"

"No! Yes! I don't know really," she mumbled finally after several vacillations, "I don't want him to leave, but, at the same time, I'm angry because he's here. Everything is so different now, and I can't be happy…not like my mother and brother because it all feels wrong! I'm a terrible person."

"You are not a terrible person. Do not be ashamed of your feelings, young one," the woman told her, "They are what they are, and you have no need to justify them."

Heartened by the reassurance, Leia relaxed her guard further. "But don't you think I should be happy? I'm trying so hard!"

"What I think hardly matters. I am a no one to you. What do you think?"

"I feel like there's a stranger living with my family," Leia confided, "And everyone expects me to welcome him with open arms when I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about him. It's very frustrating!"

"I'm sure that has been," the woman commiserated.

"And it's not that I don't want him to be here!" Leia rushed out in justification, feeling compelled to explain herself even to this woman whom she had only just met, "I do! I always have! But it hasn't been like I thought it would be at all!"

"You haven't yet adjusted to this new life," she replied, and it seemed to Leia that she was framing her feelings perfectly, "You need time to process."

"I do! But no one understands me!" Leia burst out as her bottled feelings boiled over, "My brother thinks I'm trying to make trouble! He wants me to keep quiet about it."

"He refuses to listen to you?"

Leia jerked a nod. For a moment, it struck her as odd that she was so readily unburdening all her closely guarded secrets to a woman she had only met minutes before. Yet, at the same time, something about the woman encouraged her to be open and vulnerable. Even as she questioned the inclination, she still found herself speaking freely, nonetheless. There was something inexorable about her eyes that filled Leia with a curious sense of security. She didn't consider guarding herself at all.

"It's never been like that between me and my brother before. Luke always listened to me…but that changed after he came back."

"I see," the woman murmured, "Tell me about this time when your father was lost to you. When he was away…was that by choice or circumstance?"

"I think maybe it was both," Leia considered, "But he won't talk about it. He says that he wants us to focus on being a family again, and my mother agrees with him. She won't push him for answers."

"You sound as if you believe that he is keeping secrets from you," the old woman discerned, her gaze speculative and fervid, as if she could see far beyond Leia's fleshly exterior right down into the most secret places of her heart.

"Yes. I think he is."

"Then, if that is true, the guilt should be his alone to bear. Not yours," the woman said, "You have not wronged him, my child. He has wronged you with his deception."

The bubble of resentment that had been growing steadily within Leia expanded further with the old woman's words. But the rage that was stirred deep in her gut was dark and frightening, and Leia instinctively recoiled from it. Somehow, she knew that if she gave into it completely, the fury would consume her in an awful way. She couldn't let that happen. Ben had drilled the lesson into her often enough that it had become a secret mantra for her now. Anger was the path to the dark side. Consequently, she sought to quell that dangerous emotion with calm reasoning.

"No. My father is a good man. He loves me," she insisted, "I know that. I can feel it. Being apart from us agonized him."

"I do not doubt that your father loves you, but that doesn't mean that he has not wronged you as well. Both things can be true."

"I shouldn't be angry with him."

"Neither should you deny your feelings. To do so would be a denial of truth. You've said yourself that you suspect that your father stayed away by his own choice. If that is truly the case, then you deserve answers. And if he refuses to give you those answers, it is he who is lacking in character…not you."

"But he does love me," Leia insisted, though she wasn't sure if she was trying to convince herself or the woman.

"And yet, he keeps secrets from you," the woman whispered, "That is not love, my child. That is selfish indulgence. I am well versed in that, and quite familiar with the deep hurt that family can deal to you in the name of love."

"You were betrayed," Leia concluded softly as the woman's tortured emotions inundated her. Leia could feel her loneliness and despair as if it were her own. "Your family left you alone when you needed them most…like my father left me."

"Yes. We have more in common than you realize."

"You didn't just happen upon me today, did you?" Leia asked her in slow realization.

Leia expected the realization to alarm her, but she was surprised when it did not. That was something new for her. She had never been the type to strike up quick friendships. Luke was the more gregarious one. He made friends effortlessly no matter where they went. Leia, on the other hand, tended to be the more suspicious of the two. During her young life, she had learned very early that people almost always had ulterior motives. Few were truly altruistic. For that reason, Leia's trust had to be earned, and she didn't give it easily to most people.

But the connection she felt with this woman was inexplicable. She was drawn to her. There was an odd kinship there, almost like a familial bond and it went far beyond their mutual connection to the Force. It was a commonality they shared that went far deeper than their mutual family woes too.

"Do you know me?" she whispered in a wonder-filled tone, "Were we meant to find one another today?"

The woman regarded her with steady gray eyes. "Our meeting this day was certainly the will of the Force, young one. Do not doubt that."

Before Leia could comment on her cryptic response or even analyze the reason why the Force would bring them together at all, she suddenly heard her mother calling to her. Even from a distance, Leia could detect the rising distress in Padmé's tone. Luke's light brightened in the Force as he too began to feel the first stirrings of panic over her absence. His worry would no doubt trigger her father's concerns as well. The last thing she wanted was to have them launch a frantic search for her. Leia dropped her head forward with a plaintive sigh.

"They're worried. I should go," she said, "My mother will be angry with me for wandering off."

"Of course. You should return to your family."

Leia started to turn back but stopped short to ask, "Do you live close by here? Will I see you again?"

A small smile tugged at the corners of the woman's thin mouth. "Would you like that, young one?"

"I think I would. I don't have any friends here. You would be my first."

"What an utterly sweet child you are. I think I should like to be friends with you very much."

Her face wreathed in a grateful smile, Leia dashed forward to extend her hand to the woman, "Good. I'm Leia Skywalker, by the way. If we're going to be friends, then you should know my name."

The woman took hold of her hand with a pleased smile, her clear gray eyes leaping with intense light as she clasped Leia's fingers in a firm, lingering handshake. "It is very good to meet you, Leia Skywalker. It has been many years since I've answered to the name given to me at birth. But those who know me well call me Abeloth."

Leia smiled. "Then I hope to know you well," she said before turning away to answer her mother's persistent calls.

"And you shall, little one," Abeloth replied softly to her retreating back, "You shall."