The moment she did it, she regretted it: sneaking away from the small room into which Vader had stowed her; wandering incessantly in every direction of the Star Destroyer (they had long since boarded it, much to Leia's disappointment), seeking the Sith Lord as if he were her sanity.

And then she saw it.

The most disturbing device the ex-Princess had ever beheld - aside from the Death Star, of course - encompassed Vader and removed from his head that intimidating, polished, black helmet. As the baldness of the head became exposed, Leia felt the strain in her eyelids as she stared, wide-eyed. Perhaps, to the young woman, the war hadn't been the most unbelievable thing yet; but this…

How had such damage been done? What trouble had Vader made to deserve it?

These queries would soon be answered: the unveiled man of great power turned the chair in which he sat to discover Leia - as he sensed - at the doorframe. For the minutest second, Vader was ashamed of his naked, bald, battered head.

She continued to gape at he who was her father.

Finally, a sentence from Vader: "What so unnerves you?"

Immediately hearing the ghastly difference in his voice, Leia took a slight step backward. This is not happening, she thought incredulously. Why do I feel so…pitiful of him?

And pity was not all. Leia practically sensed a feeling of desperation, but for what? She could not know.

Maybe, she mused, what Vader believed of me was true. "Nothing," spoke the woman - albeit she felt like a child - and counted the seconds between her pause and the other one's next words.

She had forgotten his name.

By this time, Vader had learned from his master that another was his offspring; and so he had lost all faith in the mere nuisance before him. "You must leave here, or my men will have you pay for your mischief."

"Where did you earn those scars?" wondered Leia, now feeling a change in her own tune; for it was she, now, who craved answers: she who, by the very look upon this tyrannical Sith Lord, had transformed her opinions by considerable margins.

First: she thought him to be more of a man. Second: his presence seemed so forlorn, as if he were truly the only being of his kind.

And third: she believed he had been telling the truth about their connection, one Leia had vowed to ignore, to curse, to cast out from her memory.

Vader would not answer her last question, and instead programmed for the machine to reapply his mask. He let out a satisfied breath as the helmet clicked into place; it was his form of comfort, of concealment from all that which had been the prelude to his far more comfortable life as a wielder of the Dark Side's delicious powers. Leia was still there, gazing upon him with her dark-brown eyes, and he cowered internally at this.

"I have no need for you," Vader announced to her. "Bespin is the next landing; you will be released there."

"Leia."

"What?" he bellowed, his attention suddenly fixed back again upon his unwanted companion. Leia held her stone-cold glare upon him.

"My name. You fail to mention it every time, so I thought -"

"Silence; your name is of no value to me." This shut Leia up, but she was hurt by it. Enough of her emotions had already been channeled toward connecting with this man of dual-personas, that now anger and fear came upon her. The anger deriving from a lack of response from Vader; and the fear stirring as she began to recognize how dangerous her situation was, both during her absence from the Rebel Alliance and after they learned what had happened.

Even still, Leia was persistent. "You believed me at one time to be of some relation to you. Why has that become a mere notion to you now? Vader, answer me: who were my parents by birth?"

"That…" responded the other, his right hand clasping the shiny silver handle of a weapon that meant more than any child of Vader's (he thought this at that moment) could ever be to him. "…is a matter of perspective."