Newborns
Leia Organa awoke with a jolt, like the crack of blasterfire in a silent room. She heaved over the side of the bunk, startled by her sudden consciousness, half-awake and gagging. Giant rolls of sickening fear tore through her chest. Wave upon wave of panic: the muscles of her arms shaking, a harsh ringing in her ears. All she could do was choke down the sounds as she fought for control.
And a shadow: a dark, looming presence in the back of her mind where instinct lived and died. Pressing every fight-or-flight reflex she had, pushing her to her hands and knees on the deckplates next to the bunk.
For twenty long seconds she fought for control over herself, fought against a rising nausea that had no sense and no ammunition since she had nothing in her stomach. Cold—as cold as the vacuum of space on the other side of the hull—so unbearably icelike and penetrating. She felt like the cold had arms, fingers, sweeping down her throat and into her organs, like she was infested with it, a plague in her blood.
I'm coming.
She pressed her lips together. The shaking worsened: great, unbearable quaking from her shoulders to her toes. It was hard to focus on anything but she tried to breathe, tried to take big gulps of air. Her lungs staggered into a steady rhythm; they were slow as a thick syrup, but they were enough for now and she was able to open her eyes into the cold, dark night-cycle of her cabin on Home One.
Leia turned her head with a soft exhale, wrestled with the ringing in her ears to find the time display soldered to the hull. 0214. Almost two hours until her alarm would rouse her from what had been a deep sleep, curled into warmth and peace with the man she loved.
She turned blurry eyes to her bunk and saw the sprawling shape of Han Solo in complete repose. In the blue night-cycle lighting the skin of his shoulder-blades looked cold, harsh, so different from the warmth he usually projected. His breathing was deep, even. She hadn't woken him, and for that she was grateful. He had a scouting run in the afternoon with his flight and those always made him nervous, though he would never admit it. He deserved his sleep.
She blew out an unsteady breath, climbed to her feet and moved into the fresher, sliding the hatch closed behind her with a shaky hand. In the harsh light she looked pale, sick. Thin and wavering. Like a ghost.
I'm coming.
The voice wasn't human and it wasn't one she'd heard before, either. It had sounded like a figment of her imagination, a specter with a voicebox meant to frighten young children. Ethereal almost, and she was left on edge with its haunting quality. The one phrase she could remember from her awful dream. I'm coming.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
She knew she was alone, knew there was no one to hear her. Tendrils of residual dread ran up and down her spine. She tried to steady her breathing, gripped the side of the spot-welded mirror with white knuckles. What was it about the voice that bespoke so much viciousness, like a heavy weight about to descend? Destructive. Smothering. Aflame.
She shook her head, leaned into the light, focused on her reflection. A bad dream, that was all it had been. A manifestation of her subconscious worrying about the Alliance. Symptomatic of a busy mind in a busy time. This was no different from her dreams of Alderaan, when she cried and cried and begged for relief from the utter horror of life without her world. A bad dream. That was it.
Get it together, she commanded herself and began braiding her hair into its usual wrap-around crown. You have a job to do.
With two hours to kill and a nagging sense of despair like a weight on her shoulders, Leia walked to the training room. She couldn't imagine going to her office and felt no need to see anyone—even Han—in this state. The fog of her nightmare had lifted but the hopelessness had not: the penetrating cold of helpless rage colored everything in sight.
By contrast, the efficiency of Home One was an idle comfort, unglossed and unfeeling. The empty corridors connected empty rooms as she passed from the officer's wing to the noncommissioned bunkrooms. Two hours left in the cycle: on-shift personnel were nearing the end of their workday and the off-shift personnel were approaching wakefulness. This was the brutal reality of war; mundanity and schedules and the minutiae of running a revolution.
But even Home One's efficacy wasn't enough to expulse the worry that sat deep in her stomach, the lingering horror of her dream. Leia wandered, listless and jittery, until she found the only possible cure for what ailed her. Physical exertion. Controlled violence.
The training room was large: a converted officer's mess hall retrofitted with floor mats, blaster shields and moving targets. Three old combat droids had been scrounged from various campaigns and added to the room's inventory—two of which were currently broken and lying in pieces in the dimly-lit corner. The air was thick with sweat as she entered through the open hatch. Ugly red paint had been used to cover the many blaster burns that littered the hull. Half the mats had been cleaned and rolled for use of the next shift on duty; the rest were piled to the side, awaiting sterilization once the room's only occupant retired for the day.
Luke Skywalker fought a training droid, unarmed and clearly out of his depth. His hair stuck to his forehead and he moved with care, favoring one leg over the other. His training tank was drenched in sweat and he was barefoot on the mats. Clumsy and unsure, he sidestepped the droid but Leia could see that the setting was more than what Luke could handle. He was a fine pilot, a fantastic mechanic, a valiant defender of the meek and helpless… But in hand-to-hand combat the savior of the Alliance was wanting. Finesse was not a tradeable commodity on Tatooine the way it had been on Alderaan and it showed in the huddled, awkward set of Luke's shoulders.
He struggled, ducking beneath the droid's rangy uppercut. With a flick of his head he dislodged his sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and stepped in for a roundhouse kick, as obvious as if he had yelled a warning. The droid scurried away on its ancient motorized legs and then toppled Luke with a sizzling charge of low-energy stun bolts.
Luke groaned and fell to the ground with a smack, arms akimbo. Leia winced at the sound. He waved off the oncoming attack from the droid and lay panting on the mat, obviously frustrated with himself.
"That's why you train without the stun bolts until you're ready," she offered.
He turned startled eyes toward her, blinked and then dropped his head back. "Who said I'm not ready?"
"The mat. The droid. The fact that the droid put you on the mat."
Luke huffed a laugh. "Give me a break. It's early."
She nodded and smiled at him, moving across the training room to offer him a hand. As she helped him stand she noted the dark circles under his eyes, the pinched look of his lips, the way even his welcoming smile felt temporary and hollow.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked.
He shrugged, wiped his face with a towel. "Is it obvious?"
Leia frowned, held her tongue. There was certainly enough anxiety to go around the Alliance. Food had been rationed for weeks; no one had stepped foot off Home One aside from the scouting runs and the advanced base-crew. The ranks were buzzing with cabin fever and High Command had run out of productive ways to treat it. Scouting missions were beginning to look useless because there was nothing around them except gravity wells and nothingness, and if the rest of the rebels didn't transfer to Echo Base soon, mutiny seemed likely.
Luke looked exactly like every other member of the Alliance: tired, wired and anxious.
"No, it's not obvious," she lied. "But I know you."
Luke seemed to brighten at her words and walked toward his small pile of personal items, tossed haphazardly to the floor in the corner.
She took a moment to warm up her body, loosened her muscles in preparation for the strain they were about to experience. Sparring with Luke wasn't exactly easy—no one was easy, hand-to-hand combat was more art than sport—but he didn't have the training of Vrix Fra Lein or Han's wiley theatrics, and was therefore flatly predictable. He'd get his blows in but they'd be glancing and light. Luke also seemed to pull his punches when he sparred with her; she wasn't sure if it was deference or fear but she'd been hopeful that she could rid him of the problem. The last thing she needed was for her people to treat her with kid gloves, particularly when she felt so jittery, exposed, with a secret she didn't dare tell anyone—
"And what about you?" Luke asked, breaking the spell. "Why are you up so early?"
"Couldn't sleep," she echoed him, distracted as she fought for control over her own mind. "Restless."
"Yeah."
She removed her boots and stepped onto the mat barefoot. With a quick step she began a light jog around the mat, knowing from experience that combat drills ended much better when her body was warm.
"I had a … Ah, I don't know what it was," Luke said out of nowhere.
Leia stopped, tilted her head to look at him.
"A nightmare, I guess, but it felt more real than a nightmare. You ever have those?"
Leia's stomach dropped and it was like the flashbacks she had whenever Alderaan crept into her nightmares. A sense of impending doom, a harbinger of disaster. Reality slipped, just for a moment, except it wasn't a fiery plume of ionized particles in front of her. It was a storm and a city in the clouds.
"What nightmare?" she asked.
"I honestly couldn't tell you," he said. "It was bad. It was like falling but there was nothing to catch me. I don't know."
She swallowed, intrigued and terrified. "Have you had this nightmare before?"
"No. But it felt familiar and … Different."
"Different how?"
He shrugged. "Maybe it's a Force thing. I don't know. Different."
And she wanted to tell him. Right then and there, she wanted to tell him about the marketplace, about Darth Vader and the stun bolts. About the way she'd felt so powerful, powerful enough to save Han from capture. The way she hadn't understood what she was capable of until Han and Salla and Chewie had all confirmed that she had indeed held energy in her body and then reissued it into their Imperial captors. There was holo-evidence hidden deep in the Falcon's memory-banks. It was real, no matter how much she might want to pretend it wasn't. No matter how much she tried to deny it and keep it a secret.
But she couldn't tell him. The words were always gone when she tried. I'm like you, she wanted to say. Help me protect myself. Help me.
She should. She should. But she couldn't. Acknowledging it to herself and to Han had been enough of a shock to her universe. Bringing Luke into it might shatter her completely. Telling Luke meant it was true, that she couldn't hide the power she had, no matter how much she might want to, no matter how much that power horrified her. The repercussions of her own unspeakable power. If she told Luke she'd have to tell Carlist, and Mon, and Jan and then everyone would know. It meant she was fundamentally different from the person she had always thought she was.
I think you're like Luke, Han had said. I think you're a Jedi.
She'd described it as a dark well of power to Han but she was beginning to think it was more like quicksand. A slow fall. What would tip her over the edge? What power would she build up this time? What if it destroyed rather than protected? What if it hurt an innocent, or Luke or Han? What if she couldn't control it and it spelled doom for them all? Luke …. Luke could wield that power and not be corrupted by it. Leia was too angry, too afraid. She knew what monsters looked like and she would not become one.
She had to tell Luke. But not now.
"Han?"
Leia looked up, confused. She had tumbled into the darkness of her own fear and hadn't realized Luke was still speaking. "What?"
"How's Han doing?"
"He's … fine," she said.
But the lingering, unsettled feeling from her nightmare and the anxiety about the Jedi talk—as Han had repeatedly called it—became one bitter emotion, one suspicious and dark thing that she didn't trust. Because if this was going into deeper waters, if Luke was about to push her into yet another discussion about why Han and Leia needed to disclose their relationship to the Alliance at large—
Another secret. One more to pile on.
"Why do you want to know?" she finished.
For a split second she hung in the anger of her own words, in how defensive they sounded. Luke didn't usually receive this kind of malice from her. He didn't deserve it. But the anger reigned supreme—bitter, suspicious, a wild animal outside of her control—and she felt trapped in a room without a window or door, watching her interactions with Luke as if she was far away from her own body.
He held up his hands in a gesture of retreat. "Just conversation, Leia, I swear."
"You're digging."
"Am not," he said, and pulled a face. "I don't want details. God."
"Good. You aren't getting any."
Luke's teasing expression dropped like a stone. The light in his eyes dimmed and in them was resignation and hurt and it snapped her back to herself with a jolt. This is Luke! she reminded herself. Your friend. There wasn't an invasive bone in his body. And if she started turning on her own small circle of friends, who would she have left? Without Luke and Chewie and Han, who was she?
You have them now, a voice whispered. But will they stay if you hurt them?
"I'm sorry," she muttered. "Oh, Luke. I'm sorry. I'm a mess."
He pressed his lips together, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Everything alright?"
"Yes. No. I don't know," she said. "I feel … conflicted."
"About Han?"
She shook her head. "He's the one part of all this that makes any sense to me."
Luke laughed and the sound made her smile.
"I know that sounds ridiculous," she continued. "I can imagine what others might think about that, but it's true. He makes sense to me. Everything else? It's an utter disaster."
"You can imagine," he quoted. "Meaning you haven't told anyone yet."
"We told you," she defended.
"I put the pieces together. The obvious pieces. You didn't tell me anything I hadn't already figured out."
He didn't ask a question, so all she did was reply with, "Put up those hands, Skywalker. I need to punch something."
Luke grinned and Leia set to work: starting slow, starting light. Her blows were easy, unhurried, more warmup than fight, and it allowed her to talk through it.
"Janson keeps asking questions about Han and me," she said. "Almost caught us yesterday."
"Caught you doing what?"
She blushed. "I mean, caught us … we weren't … we were just talking, Luke."
"He almost caught you talking," he said, pressing his lips together to suppress the smile. "Scandalous."
"Shut up."
"What happens when he catches you two eating together? Standing in the same room?" Luke's smile broke through, like the sun through dark clouds. "The peasants will revolt!"
Leia grit her teeth and stepped into him, broaching his defensive stance with one swift step. "You're hilarious."
Luke blocked a quick jab to his throat with a forearm. He sidestepped and found his original point. "Wes has credits on you two. Can't blame him for being interested."
When Han and Leia had told Luke the first bit of news to come out of Nar Shaddaa—that they were sleeping together, because somehow that was so much easier than the other thing—one of his first reactions had been abject despair. Not because his hopes for a romance with Leia were dashed, he assured them. He claimed he'd grown out of that ridiculous hero-worshipping phase rather quickly after Yavin. No, Luke's despair was of a more financial disappointment than an emotional one.
The betting pool had been rampaging for months, he'd confessed, born out of Rogue Squadron's utter boredom with Home One's recreational facilities. Luke had lost all his credits with a terrible hand of sabacc a week ago and he'd been forced to take his cred-chip out of commission until the debt was settled, a terrible fact for him because with one confirmation from either Han or her, Luke could have taken the whole pot.
Han hadn't appeared as shocked as he should have been by the existence of the betting pool. Kill, Fuck or Love it had been called and she'd been at least relieved that her best friend had firmly put his credits in the love category, even if he wasn't able to cash in his winnings. The men in her life had all been aware of it and while that felt distressing in and of itself, the fact that Han and Leia had been so obvious in their longing for each other told her that they needed some time to adjust before their relationship became public knowledge. Pressure could end relationships just as well as regular human faults could.
"I can and will blame Wes," she said. "It sounds like he's the one who started the betting pool in the first place."
Luke tilted his head, popped his neck. "What are you going to do? Report him for gross boredom? It's harmless."
She wasn't so sure about harmless. There wasn't a betting pool on Han and Luke being together, or Wedge and Janson or Janson and Hobbie. Only Han and Leia. There was an undercurrent of sexism there, but that wasn't the point.
"I wish you hadn't told me about that."
"The betting pool or that Wes is a sap?"
"Both," she said. "All of it."
Luke held up his hands and she resumed her attack, quicker now, more sustained. Three quick snaps. He ducked but her left got too close to his ear and he grunted under his breath.
"I mean, you guys can't keep this a secret forever. You know that, right?"
Leia didn't answer in words, choosing instead a one-two punch that came nowhere close to hitting him. He might be a sloppy fighter but he picked up signals pretty quick. Teachable, she'd say.
"Right?" he repeated.
She sighed. "You're right," she admitted. "We know you're right."
Luke pressed the advantage with a quick step toward her. "But?"
She focused on blocking Luke as he offered four quick but light punches toward her midsection. The movement felt good, the distraction a quick remedy. Like her physical self could take over for her brain, like she could expel the stress of her work and her secrets through a finite series of sidesteps and blocks.
When she found her words, they were unexpected. "But there's a part of me that wants to cherish it."
Everything else about her life was public knowledge within Alliance ranks. Her heartache, her devotion to the cause, her legal and diplomatic training and her vicious need to defeat the Empire. All of it was out there for their consumption. She knew she was a point of gossip, she knew her successes and failures were in demand. Her life up until now had been so extraordinary—orphan to adopted princess, princess to teenaged senator, senator to survivor of genocide—that it was only natural she would be a gossip darling. Even her friendship with Luke was a point of conversation: what did they even talk about with such vastly different backgrounds? Different sensibilities? He, from humble beginnings who had saved them all, and she from privilege who had sacrificed all for the greater good?
But her relationship with Han was different. It was so deeply personal. Her own small miracle. She wanted to protect it from all of that. The speculation, the gossip, the inquiring eyes and judgmental smiles. She wanted to hide it away in a part of herself that belonged only to Han, that was resistant to such paltry annoyances. Selfish, sure, but also desperately needed because there was a damn betting pool about her sex life. Talk about an invasion of privacy.
"You're not, uh, ashamed or anything, right?" Luke asked. "Like you don't regret—?"
"Why would I be ashamed?"
Luke stepped back and shrugged. "I don't know."
She pivoted, whipped them around the room. "Trust me, Luke. The last thing I am is ashamed of Han."
Leia flipped to the offensive, using her small size to her advantage. Quick blows to Luke's chest, an elbow into his stomach, a shoulder under his chin and he was once again on the ground, panting, looking dazed.
"Oh, good," he said with an edge of sarcasm. "Super glad you're having a good time."
"Embarrassing you is always a good time, Skywalker."
He mock-glared at her, stepped back and assumed his typical combat pose. "Fine," he said. "Have it your way."
Luke's attack was obvious but now it was also a little more desperate and Leia felt a small fire of satisfaction in her chest. Why she felt so good about making Luke lose a little control was beyond her; maybe it was like how Han felt when she acted a little less dignified in front of him.
She blocked his elbow to her stomach, pivoted around his quick punch, ducked under a second punch with his weaker side, then shoved her elbow into his kidney and when his back bowed, she dug a knee into his stomach. Luke wheezed and hit the mat again.
"The hell, Leia?" he said between deep, dragging breaths.
She smiled. "You have to learn to hide what you're going to do. It's like you're doing the Galacza. I know exactly how it goes."
"What's a Galacza?"
"Court dance, super boring," she said, and offered her hand to him again.
He stood up on his own, rejecting her hand and she tucked her satisfied smile away as he hobbled over to his water bottle with a distinct groan. The nightmare—or bad feeling or exhaustion or anxiety or whatever it had been—was forgotten in the pleasure of physical pain and effort, in the process of trying to teach Luke how to hide his intent, in how to use his weight to his advantage. This was physics, this was basic martial arts, free from secrets and love and fear. In this, she could find peace and she would hold onto the small reprieve with tight fists.
Commander Han Solo awoke alone in the princess's quarters and was pissed about it. The day unfurled before him in all its exquisite, painful truth: long and Leia-less, full of scouting missions and strategy meetings. The one bright spot in all the work was waking up with Leia, sliding his fingers across beautiful skin and nestling his nose into hair that smelled like Florian dewpetals. Sometimes they would find themselves too exhausted to enjoy each other after their long days; mornings were better. Slower, more personal, less frantic. Less about physical gratification and more about closeness. And in a startling turn of events, he found that in this small space, the beautiful, soft mornings with Leia in her bunk, or his, or even just seeing her across from him in a strategy meeting in the morning … That was all he needed to feel good about the day. A little Leia, that's all.
You're a lost cause, he thought, but only shrugged and threw his legs over the side of the bunk.
It didn't bother him to be so completely obsessed with his new relationship. Was obsessed the right word? He didn't care. He liked this thing between them. He liked his new life, the responsibility. It was challenging and rewarding and, hell, when Leia looked at him like that, he was a goner for sure.
But she had left early this morning. Maybe he'd missed a comm call; she didn't usually forget to tell him when he would be waking up alone. They'd slipped into a kind of domestic comfort on Home One that mystified and startled him even as it made him feel safe and adored. Their relationship was new, of course, but he felt like they'd put in good time before the fireworks had happened. Maybe the payoff was an easier slide into whatever this was. Domesticity? Was it domesticity if you lived on a battle cruiser?
He jumped into the sonic stall, quickly dressed and made sure he didn't look as happily sleep-deprived as he felt. He had an image to maintain, after all, and facing his flight with any discernible weakness was the last thing he needed. Then he turned and faced the hatch with a twist to his lips. This was the trick of the day. Not commanding his pilots—that had seemed to come easier to him than he'd realized; goddamn it, Leia had been right—but the careful dance of leaving Leia's quarters without notice.
They didn't always sleep in her allotted quarters; sometimes they stayed on the Falcon. But Han and Leia were acutely aware that poor Chewbacca's audial abilities far exceeded their own. No matter how quiet they tried to be, Chewie would hear them, and that shit just wasn't fair. Han knew from experience. When Malla and Chewie were together, he got the hell outta dodge and let them have their time.
So subterfuge was the routine for now. And it wasn't like he'd never snuck out of a being's quarters before.
Han took a deep breath and opened the hatch just enough for him to poke his head out and assess the corridor. Long and scuffed, the bulkheads unfurled before him with breathless length. Dark shapes were visible to his left but they were so far away he doubted they would even notice which hatch he had come from. The crossways to his right looked free and so he gunned it, hopping out of the hatch and feeling relief as the door closed behind him with a soft hiss.
He swiped a hand through his unruly hair and assumed an unconcerned gait, loping and nonchalant. Leia called it his swagger and he kind of liked the way she said it, like he had some kind of power to assume his criminality at will.
That swagger, she'd said just last week. You break hearts with a walk like that.
He'd considered her words and then offered a shrug. I'm okay with that, long as it isn't yours.
Focused on the memory of Leia's soft, appreciative smile, he didn't notice the impending confrontation until far too late. So much for a swagger, he thought as he came face-to-face with the dopey, twinkling, eternally-teasing face of Wes Janson.
"Hey-oh, Commander," he called. "What're you doing here this early?"
Janson was born to be a fighter pilot: short, compact, quick and confident. Always keen for a joke, he was the perfect compliment to Luke's Rogue Squadron and a foil for Hobbie Kivian's constant pessimism. Recently, he'd been known to stalk through the corridors of Home One as a kind of glorified hall monitor after a recent debacle with Jan Dodonna in which Janson had dyed all the general's uniforms a glaring, obnoxious shade of pink.
Han turned the full force of his command onto Luke's pilot. "Officer's quarters."
"Thought you slept on the Falcon."
"I did. I do. I—uh, had a meeting," Han said, trying valiantly to give his brain time to awaken. "Fuckin' meetings, am I right?"
A pause. Silence. Han's heart thumped wildly.
"Right," Wes said. "Meetings."
Han panicked. Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he rocked back on his heels and demanded he get control over himself.
"Why are you here so early?" he asked.
Janson blinked. "Dodders' version of latrine duty," he said. "Could have done a lot worse but I think Luke stepped in."
Han shrugged. "Luke's a softie."
"Clearly you've never failed a sim with him," Janson said. "Didn't think Jedi knew Huttese. Commander can swear like a spacer."
"He's from Tatooine." Han said, and that was statement enough. Fucking planet was a trash heap. Of course Luke knew how to tell his pilots to shut the fuck up in twelve languages. "Hey, Wes, I gotta run. More meetings."
Janson nodded. "Yeah, man. Go ahead. I'll keep watching the officer's corridor. Never know what you'll see at this hour."
Han fought the sneer that came to his lips—Wes was fishing, that was all, no need to worry—and resumed his saunter down the corridor. Gotta be more careful, he thought. Or we're gonna get caught.
And yet, still, he couldn't bring himself to regret the morning, or the night before or the night to come, when they'd dodge notice again. Time with Leia was enough. Time with Leia was always, always enough.
Caught in the darkest pits of a dying neutron star, the Executor hung in stillness. Her massive shape dwarfed the two other Star Destroyers just off to starboard. Three flights of TIEs flew into her docking bays; they looked like swarming Ngoth wasps. Petty and small and dangerous.
Beneath the grandeur of overwhelming Imperial might and scuttled into his private quarters, Darth Vader sat on an uncomfortable, high-backed chair. Rigid and straight, he sat in the tight confines of his oxygen chamber, eyes closed, mouth open as the air hissed around him. Sound deprivation was a key factor in his decision to make the Executor his flagship. Creature comforts were none of his concern but privacy and the somewhat-strangling feeling of the oxygen chambers was a priority. Never mind that his wounds would never heal; never mind that the oxygen treatments were not sustaining whatever life it was he had left.
He could focus here. He could fulfill his master's orders here. Nothing else mattered.
He was fully open to the Force, felt the tendrils of power slither through him, around him. It bent to his will, curved where he wanted. Lines became parabolas. Light became darkness. He could twist matter into nothingness with just the clenching of a fist, could end a life in the blink of an eye. The power was uncomfortable, grating. It did not wrap around him, lift him, as it used to. But in the shadow of that infantile understanding was power, unadulterated potential, and that was all that mattered.
Coming, he thought. I'm coming.
He wasn't sure if they understood; they were both wholly untrained. Their awareness of the Force was limited by both their age, their idealism and naivete, and the fact that they were somehow hidden from him. He could not tell if they were together, physically in the same place, or if they were worlds apart. He didn't know where they were—Obi-Wan's tricks had been maddening to Anakin Skywalker and they were infuriating to Vader—but he tried nonetheless.
In the starless expanse of the empty Force—the field of players eradicated except for his master and himself—he could see them. Two nebulae: newborns, really. Their power was limited, quiet. Dimmed. And he knew they were not dim in terms of Force sensitivity: the Princess' strength had been obvious to him in the marketplace on Nar Shaddaa and Skywalker was his progeny.
They were dim because Obi-Wan had made them so.
Vader had hunted down and eliminated countless survivors of his master's decree. He was well-versed in how to see the stars in the expanse. And yet these two, these last two, they eluded him. They dimmed, they burst, they moved. As he got closer they pulled away, or shot across the expanse with the speed of that decrepit ship they insisted on flying. Part of him marveled at Obi-Wan's ingenuity.
I'm coming, he whispered into the expanse.
It was only a matter of time until he succeeded. And then he would have them for himself, would have the resources he needed to take his place as the ultimate power in the galaxy. He would be patient for the moment. He would send dark, twisted messages to them, leave them on edge without knowing why. And when the time was ripe, he would strike.
It was only a matter of time.
Author's Note: Chapter 3 will post on Sunday, December 1st. Thank you! -KR
