Millennium Falcon
In Hyperspace
The Next Day
"Then what happened?" Leia asked eagerly.
Luke slurped down the rest of a bottle of blue milk and leaned back against the shabby chair adjacent to the equally shabby dejarik table.
"When Father was finished killing almost everyone, Mother interrogated one of the few bad guy survivors, who promptly informed us of the location of the new crime boss on Tatooine, who was settled in Mos Espa. Father flew us there in a landspeeder and I tell ya, he's a pretty awesome pilot. Mother told me he won the Boonta Eve Classic when he was just a kid…"
"Focus, Luke," Han advised, keeping a wary eye on his beloved Leia, whose right eyebrow was twitching dangerously.
"Right," Luke said. "Well, we went to Mon Espa, and found the guy in charge, who was a Falleen male…"
"Xizor," Leia said.
"Yep," Luke agreed, taking a bite of a ration bar and chewing on it determinedly. "I mean, the guy in Mon Espa wasn't Prince Xizor himself, but he was one of Xizor's underlings."
"So Black Sun has moved into Tatooine," Han said grimly, and Chewbacca, who had lumbered in a minute before, howled mournfully.
"It is not too surprising," Leia said, standing up and beginning to pace in her agitation. "Black Sun has been in the middle of the spice trade, and the slave trade, for years."
"Father is really angry about it," Luke said sunnily, "so I don't think it will be a problem. Like, he is gonna go find Xizor and kill him dead, and dismantle his organization."
Leia stared at her twin, and he looked at her. "What?" he asked.
"I...guess that is Ok," she said. "The enemy of our enemy is, I guess, our friend. I just hope there isn't much collateral damage."
Luke snorted and said, "If Father was in charge, there would be lots of collateral damage, I'm afraid, but Mother – Padme – she won't put up with it. She is a really good person."
"Then why is she with Darth Vader?" she snapped.
Luke sighed and said, "Because she loves him, Leia."
"How...how can she possibly love him?" she snapped, throwing her hands in the air. "He is so evil!"
Surprisingly, it was Han who explained. "Leia, do you love Luke?"
"Of course I do!" the princess said indignantly and then rolled her eyes, "in a brotherly way, of course!"
"So suppose you had some kind of injury and it was clear Luke was involved in causing the injury and you went to sleep and woke up and there he was, all sad and apologetic about having in fact done you harm. Would you forgive him?"
"Of course I would!"
"Well, that is exactly what happened to your mother," Solo said reasonably. "She loved Anakin Skywalker, she was married to him, she was pregnant with his kids, he went crazy, she was sad and worried, and then suddenly, zoom, she is 23 years in the future and her husband is a maniac cyborg who is super in love with her still, and also apologetic. Also, the galaxy is a wreck and she'll get a lot farther working with him than against him."
Leia stalked over to the galley, poured herself a finger of Corellian whiskey, threw it down, and then wandered back.
"You are right, that does make sense," she admitted. "So Luke, obviously you made it away from Tatooine, and I assume Vader and his forces didn't try to capture you?"
"Yeah, nothing like that," her brother said. "Padme made it super clear that she wants to spend time with both you and me, but on our terms only."
Leia grimaced and said, "I want to see her, but not him."
"I get that, but realistically she is sticking to him like shaak glue right now. She keeps him calm, which is the most important thing in the galaxy she can do right now."
"I understand," Leia said unhappily.
"But a lot can change in the next few months," Luke said cheerfully. "If Xizor is wiped out, and our fleet and Vader's fleet can take the main hyperspace lanes, and Coruscant is left mostly on its own, well, things will be good!"
/
Varykino
Naboo
Three months later
"Hey, where is the five blossom bread?" Sola Naberrie yelped, looking around her kitchen with a mixture of bewilderment and exasperation.
Former Senator Pooja Naberrie sidled uneasily into the room from the adjacent dining room and said, "Sorry, Mom, Ryoo and I ate it last night."
Sola stared at her incredulously. "But I had only had one piece!"
"We're sorry," Ryoo said, entering the room with an extravagant expression of contrition. "We were talking and snacking and before we knew it..."
"All that was left was crumbs," her mother grumbled, though her smile made it obvious that she was not truly upset. "At least you cleaned the counter off."
"The last thing we want is another antz invasion," her older daughter said, rolling her eyes. There had been an unfortunate incident some years previously when a massive spill of blue milk had been insufficiently dealt with, and columns of antz had set up shop in the Naberrie kitchen. It had taken the droids two days to find and kill them all.
"So what were you talking about last night?" Sola asked, rooting around in the cooler in search of something else to eat, since her famished daughters had eaten the five blossom bread.
There was a dramatic silence, and when Sola pulled her head out of the cooler, she found both daughters staring at her.
"Oh, about that!" Sola said, straightening and planting her hands on her hips. "Girls, really, I thought I had myself entirely clear. That is not your aunt Padme!"
"But it looks like her!" Ryoo declared.
"It sounds like her," Pooja added.
"I mean," Ryoo continued, "we looked at some of her speeches from 23 years ago and it totally..."
"It is not my sister," Sola said, and was embarrassed to hear her voice tremble. She cleared her throat and said, very steadily, "Time travel is impossible, and we all know it. This whole thing is some kind of disgusting political trick. Disgusting and intelligent; my sister, your aunt, was highly respected decades ago, and Vader is just…"
She trailed off as both her daughters paled, their eyes fixed on something behind her. Sola spun around, choked, then squeaked.
"It isn't a trick, Sola," Padme Naberrie Amidala Skywalker said, taking a few steps closer to her sister. "When you were eight years old, you cried yourself to sleep on the night of your Life Day because you didn't get a Captain Zoopa WonderShaak plushie. When you were ten years old, you crept into the kitchen at midnight, ate an entire bowl of chocolate pudding and threw up for hours afterward, and swore me to secrecy. When you were twelve…"
"Padme?" Sola cried out, drawn inexorably toward her sister. "Padme? Is it really you?"
Padme took the last few steps and pulled her now much older sister into her arms. "It is me, yes. I know it seems crazy, but the Force is crazy sometimes."
"Padme, Padme!" Sola repeated, and burst into noisy tears. "Oh, Padme!"
It took a full ten minutes for Sola to calm down, and even then she only managed to regain some semblance of rationality when her elder daughter shamefacedly offered her a piece of five blossom bread which, in fact, Ryoo had hidden in an obscure cabinet.
"I cannot believe you deceived me about the five blossom bread!" Sola said, wiping her eyes, and Pooja said, meekly, "We planned to give you some later, Mother. We were going to make chocolate blue milk pudding and serve it with the five blossom bread for dessert…"
The woman trailed off and grimaced, aware that talking about pudding when one was in the presence of one's same age aunt who had been catapulted forward in time 23 years and was apparently married to an insane cyborg was kind of silly.
"So," Padme said, stepping back and smiling, though her eyes were wet with tears, "You remember Anakin, right?"
Her three relations gaped and turned as a very tall figure dressed in a black cloak, with the hood pulled well over its head, appeared in the doorway and stalked over to take its place next to Padme's petite figure.
Sola stared at her sister, then at the cloaked figure, and then back at the figure. "Anakin?"
"That name now has meaning to me," the figure declared.
This, not surprisingly, confused the three inhabitants of Varykino, and Padme wandered over to wrap an arm around her husband and said, "That means yes; Anakin's speech patterns have grown statelier in the last couple decades."
"And you are also ... you are also Darth Vader?" Pooja asked uneasily.
"Yes," Padme said cheerfully, "I mean, I'm not thrilled with that name but that has been his go to name for a long time so..."
She stopped and her eyes lit up.
"Luke!" she cried out, releasing Anakin's arm and surging forward to embrace the young man who had just wandered into the kitchen.
"Hello, Mother," Luke replied, returning the hug with enthusiasm.
Sola gulped hard and reached out a hand to stabilize herself on a counter. "How are random people making it into the house?"
"Anakin can unlock doors with the Force," Padme explained.
"And Leia and I just jumped up to a balcony and found an unlocked door," Luke continued.
Padme jerked upright and her eyes brightened. "Leia?"
"Hello, Padme," Leia Organa said, stepping into the room, firmly ignoring the two meter cloaked form across the room from her.
Padme froze for a moment and then launched forward to embrace her daughter for the very first time. "Leia! Oh Leia!"
Leia had always felt loved by the Organas. She had always belonged. But she had to admit that in this moment, held in the arms of the woman who had given her birth, she felt a strange sense of completion, as if something long gone was being restored.
"Hello, Mother," she murmured, and blinked back tears.
"My grown up daughter, so beautiful!" Padme cried out, stepping back. "Not tall, though. You both inherited my height, obviously."
"Father is ridiculously tall," Luke agreed, boldly sauntering over to Anavader. "How are you, Father?"
Vader, who could hardly see Leia with the hood pushed forward so much, squinted and used the Force to augment his vision for a moment. His eyes, while better, still weren't great, but he was struck again, with his wife and daughter standing side by side, how much they resembled one another. He was a total idiot.
"Ani, don't you have something to say to Leia?" Padme asked in a minatory tone.
"I, erm, apologize for torturing you and letting Tarkin blow up Alderaan."
Leia stared at him, and he felt his shoulders slump a little. He was quite certain that Leia would have made a fabulous Sith. If looks could kill, he'd be lying on the floor in several pieces.
"Seriously?" the princess demanded, taking a furious step forward. "Words mean nothing, Vader, do you get that? Especially when Mother obviously coached you!"
"I apologize for torturing you and letting Tarkin blow up Alderaan," Vader said again, but this time he dropped his shields to allow his true emotions to spill forth.
Leia's eyes blew wide and she took a step backwards, while Luke made a run for the sink and threw up.
"Stop!" Leia cried out, raising her own shields. "Stop it now!"
He raised his shields again and Luke quickly ran some water, slurped and spit, and turned an indignant look on the cloaked cyborg.
"You need therapy," he said flatly, waving his hands. "You are a mess!"
"He's right," Leia agreed, rubbing a hand over her forehead. "Wow!"
"What just happened?" Pooja asked nervously.
"Force sensitivity thing," Padme explained, marching over to wrap a petite arm around her husband. "The twins are both trained Force sensitives and apparently Anakin was showing that he really is sorry about his past crimes against Leia."
"I acknowledge that he does indeed regret it," Leia said, still shaken at the maelstrom of self loathing which had emanated from her biological sire, "but I can't forgive you, not yet. But Luke is right, you need therapy and plushies."
"Maybe not in that order."
"Plushies?" Ryoo asked weakly.
"They help," Luke said, "a lot."
"Well, I am in agreement on both therapy and plushies," Padme said. "But first, we need to talk about a few things."
"Would you like to sit down in the living area?" Sola asked, rather weakly.
Author Note: I know I have haven't posted in at least two months, and also that this particular arc has been very long. I intend to finish up this arc in the next few days and will post another chapter.