Princess Leia's quarters

Royal Palace

Aldera

Alderaan

"No! No! NOOOOOOOOOOO!" shrieked the dark haired girl as she ran from her mother toward her play room. "No nap! NOOOOOO!"

Breha Organa sighed deeply and followed her angel, her darling, her terror of a daughter toward the little girl's playroom. She knew from bitter experience that if she did not insist on a nap, Leia would be a veritable disaster by evening. Leia needed a nap. Breha needed Leia to take a nap. But Leia did not want a nap. Hence, they repeated this particularly scenario every single day.

"Leia," Breha said in a patient voice as she rounded the corner and then stopped in utter, shocked, abject horror. An unknown dark blonde male was standing in the middle of Leia's play room, a man with a lightsaber, and Leia was...she could not be...no!

"Hello, little Leia," the man said as the little one approached him cautiously. He dropped down into a crouch and placed a loving arm around her. "Aren't you just the cutest thing!"

"Get away from her," Breha snarled, looking around frantically for some kind of weapon. "Get away!"

The man stood to his full, not very impressive height, and took a few obedient steps away, but Leia, incredibly enough (for she was shy with strangers) followed him and, before Breha's incredulous eyes, clasped the Unknown's knees with her pudgy arms.

"Leia, Leia!" the queen of Alderaan cried out in horror. "Come here, my darling, come..."

"NOOOOOOOO!" Leia screamed indignantly, burying her face into the man's trousers. "NOOOOOOO!"

Luke Skywalker lifted a placating hand toward the queen and, using his gentlest tone, said, "Your Highness, I assure you that I will not harm your daughter."

"Who are you?" she demanded hoarsely.

"Well, I am sure this will be hard for you to accept, but I am actually Luke Skywalker, twin brother of Leia Organa, but I am from 30 years in the future, from another timeline."

Breha blinked at the Luke.

Luke blinked back.

"Impossible," the queen breathed out. "Impossible! For one thing, time travel is impossible. For the other, Leia doesn't have a twin."

"She does," Luke insisted gently. "I am not surprised your husband didn't tell you, though, since he and Kenobi and Master Yoda didn't want to risk Vader and Palpatine finding out about Luke if Leia was compromised."

Breha Organa gulped convulsively. Kenobi had been around when Leia was born but surely Bail, surely he would have told her if... if...

"Why don't you call him?" Luke suggested, picking up his Alter twin and carrying her over to a chair. He sat down and the little girl cuddled up against him with her right thumb pushed firmly in her mouth. "But please do not call your security. If Vader hears about an unknown Jedi popping up on Alderaan, he will know to look here for one of the Skywalker twins."

Breha lifted her com to her lips and entered the most familiar code.

"Yes, my dear?" came the beloved sound of her consort.

/

10 minutes later

"Yes, there were twins," Bail admitted, his eyes fixed incredulously on the sight of his daughter, now sleeping soundly, in the lap of a dark blonde man who claimed to be her twin brother from the future. A dark blond individual who looked like Anakin.

"How could you not tell me that, Bail?" Breha demanded, though she kept her voice down. "How could you not bring them to us? We would have loved them both! To separate orphans from one another – it is cruel!"

"The concern, which is valid, is that the twins would be too bright in the Force together," Luke explained, looking down fondly on his tiny twin sister. "So they were separated. I am not gonna tell you where Luke is because it is better that you not know, just in case, but yeah, it is unlikely their Force signatures could have been hidden for so long if they had been together, even though Leia has always shielded well."

Breha took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Why are you here?" she demanded baldly.

"I am not sure," Luke responded, shifting slightly. "I was thinking I'd head back to my own timeline but I got dropped here. I am guessing I need to tell you about Vader."

The Organas paled noticeably and Breha said hesitantly, "Does he know about the twins?"

"He does, because I told him," Luke explained. "Not where they are, of course, but that they lived. It was what pushed him to turn on Palpatine and help kill him off."

The rulers of Alderaan gasped synchronously and Bail took a few eager steps forward. "Is Palpatine truly dead? Of course we heard that someone snuck in and killed the Emperor, but it just seemed so unlikely that we thought it might be some kind of trick."

Luke grinned. "Oh yeah, he is so dead. My wife and I, and Vader, all snuck in the back way into the Throne Room and engaged Palpatine and the royal guards and I chopped off the Emperor's arms and Vader plunged his lightsaber through his chest. He is totally dead."

Bail, who had seen images of the supposedly dead Palpatine, relaxed. The wounds described matched those of the corpse currently lying in state in Imperial City. "Well, that is marvelous news, is it not, my dear?"

Breha nodded slowly, but her brow was furrowed and her eyes narrowed in confusion. "Why did he do that?"

"He who?" Luke asked, carefully shifting Leia so that she could relax more easily on his arm.

"Vader. Why did the news of the twins cause him to turn on Palpatine?"

Luke rolled his eyes. "Ah, another thing your husband didn't tell you. Vader used to be Anakin Skywalker, and he is the twins' father."

Breha froze in shock for a full thirty seconds, then swiveled her neck to stare menacingly into her consort's eyes. "Bail? Please tell me that is not true."

The viceroy of Alderaan winced and admitted, "Yes, it is true. It was another case of..."

"We are raising Darth Vader's daughter?" she demanded, her voice rising. "Darth Vader? Sith Lord? Emperor of the known galaxy?"

"We thought it best that you not know that either, my love," Bail said weakly.

"Bail Organa!" Breha began, only to be interrupted by Luke.

"Your Highnesses, can you please sort out this out later? I never know quite how much time I have, and the Force may yank me at any minute. The point is that Vader is really attached to family. He turned on the Jedi and the Republic in a failed attempt to save Padme from death; he was having nightmares of her dying in childbirth, you see, which did happen, though mostly that is because of his actions, and Palpatine, of course, always Palpatine...anyway, he thought he killed Padme and his unborn child (they didn't know she was carrying twins) so he's been crippled with guilt the last three years."

"Given how many tens of thousands of sentients he has destroyed since he joined Palpatine, I would not have thought 'guilt' was his primary motivation," Breha declared, her eyes flashing.

"Yeah, I know. He has major, major anger management problems. Basically I think he feels – felt – that the galaxy took away everything he loved, and consequently the galaxy must pay. I mean, it is twisted and ugly, for sure. He is also not unique in his feelings that he hates everyone, including himself, and will break everything he touches but he IS unique in being the strongest Force user the galaxy has ever seen. Lots of other people are profoundly screwed up people, but most just terrorize or destroy their near circle, not the entire galaxy."

Bail and Breha stared at one another for a long moment and then Breha dropped down on the couch next to Luke and reached out a loving hand to stroke her little girl's hair.

"What do you think we should do?" the queen asked soberly, hesitantly.

"Right now, just keep raising her well," Luke returned, placing his own hand on the queen's. "I am not saying you should tell Vader about her yet. I have twin three year olds of my own and they infuriate me, and I am a pretty calm person, if I do say so myself. But I told him that he needed to work back to the Light and if in a year or two, or five, or ten, you see major changes in his life – well, I would tell him. If he has to wait too long to reconnect with his children, he may give way to frustration, which will be ugly. He isn't really emotionally mature, you see. Realistically, of course, you can't wait until Leia is more than I'd say 15 or 16; Vader has met my sister and he'll see the similarities between the heir of Alderaan and his Alter daughter, you know?"

Breha, who had relaxed noticeably at the beginning of his speech, nodded and said carefully, "Are you and ... and your Leia happy?"

Luke Skywalker smiled a little. "We are very happy, yes. We've both been through a lot; it hasn't been an easy life, but my sister and her husband have 4 kids, and my wife and I have 3, and we live a busy and very good life."

"I am glad," Bail responded. "Are ... are we around?"

Luke shook his head regretfully. "My guardians and you were murdered by the Empire when Leia and I were 19. We both lost our respective sets of parents within a few days of each other. But don't worry; we have altered the timeline tremendously. Palpatine is dead, and we didn't wipe him out until we were 23 years old...oh, my toes are tingling, which means I'm leaving..."

He vanished into thin air, leaving Leia to drop a few inches onto the couch. The little girl opened her eyes, glared at her mother, and yelled, "NO NAP!"

Author Note: My apologies for the slow, slow updates! I know this chapter is short but decided to give you something to read. I am writing a couple of Pride and Prejudice stories, and homeschooling my kids, and we just acquired two four week old orphaned kittens. I'm swamped!