Luke explores his hiding place and Vader and Leia meet. It goes about as well as you might expect.

The warehouse was somewhat less frightening during the day.

Without any windows in the tiny room Luke had burrowed himself into, he awoke disoriented and with no idea what time it was. He had had dreams all night, of the ship, of being back home, of his aunt and uncle lecturing him for running off, and they were so vivid that when he awoke he did not even know where he was for a few seconds. He kept expecting to feel the heat of daytime, to see the poundstone walls of his room, to check his bedroom chrono for the time.

It was not there, and that, as well as not hearing his aunt and uncle calling him to get up to do his chores, jolted him into awareness of where he actually was.

At least the moaning was quieter. He could tell that the monsters were still around by the pacing of their footsteps, but it was… quieter. And they weren't clawing at the walls either.

He got up, shoving aside his blanket, and slowly crept to the front of the room. He didn't think they had gotten inside, but he wanted to be sure before he came out. He placed his ear on the door, hearing nothing out of the ordinary. Slowly, he eased open the door, still listening.

Nothing.

Carefully, he poked his head out and looked into the massive warehouse as best as he could, down one corner, then another. It was daytime, he could tell that much - there were windows around the whole building, the glass surface covered with some kind of film that blurred the outside. Yellow light flowed in, and along the bottom row of windows, he could see the shadows of moving shapes, hunched and lurching in and out of view.

Luke swallowed hard and closed the door, huddling back in the room.

But there was nothing to do there, and after a while, when nothing changed, he got back up and opened the door again. It was the same thing, the same moans, the same shapes bobbing up and down the glass. The warehouse was big and was a little more interesting than his tiny room.

And maybe he could find some way out.

Luke had no idea how to do that or what to do if he did get out, but he didn't want to think about that right now. He didn't want to think about the next day or what would happen to him if he couldn't get out. Right that moment, his stomach was rumbling, so he focused solely on what to eat.

After rummaging through his pack, he grabbed one of the ration bars he had found last night. It tasted like cardboard and had the texture of sand, so he drank some of the still-clear water, which was nice, nicer than the ration bar.

After that, all he could do was look around the warehouse for a way out.

And if he did not find one, or if the way out didn't work… then he would worry about that later.

The warehouse was huge, rising a hundred feet above his head, with rails and walkways and stairs forming several levels besides the ground level. There were so many crates and cartons and boxes, made of plasteel and mostly closed up, that when he tried to count them he lost track and had to start over. It wasn't completely crowded, he could move around quite easily, but there were stacks and stacks of them crowded all over the floor; towers of boxes rising over his head. Between looking through them and climbing around the hanging rails, or trying out the rickety metal stairs that swung and creaked when he stepped on them and finding even more boxes up there, Luke actually found the day going by kind of quickly.

He could even ignore the moaning outside, so long as he occupied himself with opening things up and peeking at what was inside.

Some of the boxes were very light and their lids easy to open: they were hinged and not even locked and he could just swing them open. Others were heavy with screws holding them closed, and he ignored them until he found a wrench halfway through the day and started using it. That was very pleasant and reminded him of working in Uncle Owen's garage, helping to fix broken droids or poking his head down the engine of their battered old speeder. A few that made him very curious had actual control panels on them requiring a password. He poked at them for a bit, trying a few random numbers but gave up after only a few tries. There were too many other things to look at.

Luke wondered how his uncle and aunt were doing. If they were worried. If they were looking for him. Or if they were mad at him. If they thought it was better that he'd run off.

He didn't like that thought.

So he buried it in looking through the boxes for… anything useful, he told himself. Like more food. He found a big box that was crammed full of ration bars, more than he could ever eat, and he amused himself trying to pick some of the tastier-looking ones. But then he opened the one next to it and found something better: meal packets. They looked much better than the bars, and they were light and flat. A lot of them did have funny colors - he had never seen green meat before - but he knew he could eat it; meal packs were for many species, including humans. The bad thing was that there were no instructions and he had no idea how to prepare them, but they were easy to hold and he stuffed them in his backpack regardless. He refilled his water bottles, always aware of how bad it felt to get thirsty even if this planet was a lot damper than Tatooine.

In one box he found a whole mass of clothing, all folded neatly. Some looked exactly like the stuff he wore at home, but there were others that looked so beautiful and expensive he didn't feel right touching them. Some were light and slippery, like water, of pale colors that he barely touched because he was afraid of dirtying them. Another was of a plain color but covered with glittering jewels and threads spun out of silver or gold. Yet another had no decorations but had been painted in colors so bright it hurt to look at. And then there were the coats, so thick and heavy with some kind of fur all around the sleeves and collar, that when he held it his fingers sank right into them.

In another bunch of boxes he found more food, lots and lots of it, but spoiled. The smell had been so bad when he opened it that he had immediately slammed the lid back down, but not before catching a glimpse of moldy vegetables, blackened and bruised fruit, and meat that had worms crawling all over it. Luke stared at it mournfully; the box side claimed it held bantha and nerf steaks and other Core World delicacies.

There was another stack of boxes full of useful, random items. Luke caught sight of dehydrators that looked way better than the ones his Aunt Beru used, and wished wistfully he could bring one back to her. There were all sorts of small stoves and heaters and other cooking devices he was afraid to touch. There were tools and glow rods. He set the last aside for when it got really dark.

Then there was the box full of machinery parts. Lots of it looked familiar enough, gears and wiring and chips just like the ones at home, only these were shiny and not full of rust or sand that he would have to clean off. Others he had not seen before but he could guess their use from their size and shape: droid parts (there were quite a few of those sitting in the warehouse, but none of them worked - maybe they had to be recharged each night?), speeder parts (that made him want to immediately try them on Uncle Owen's old thing), stuff that might be used in actual starships. And there were a few where he had no idea what they were for. Big machines, maybe? Luke stared longingly at some of them: Uncle Owen would have loved to have had a loadlifter like the one sitting in a corner; he was always complaining about moving stuff around. And Aunt Beru might have appreciated a labor droid for all the chores they had to do on the farm.

It was nearing evening when he trotted back to his resting spot, not looking forward to another dinner of ration bars. He wondered if he should try to prepare one of the meal packets, but the thought of messing up and wasting the food brought back memories of Uncle Owen grumbling at him for not finishing his dinner, and that was too painful to contemplate. He had only looked through half the warehouse and had not even attempted to climb up to the higher levels because the swaying steps had scared him too badly. The lights weren't working - he had tried - so it was no use looking around in the dark, plus even if they had, he didn't want to turn them on because the moaning monsters outside might see it and try to look for him again.

Speaking of the monsters, they had been leaving him alone, kind of. Not all the time, but whenever the pounding became too scary, he'd scrunch back and whisper his go away go away go away mantra, and for some reason that would work and eventually they'd leave.

He'd even been brave enough to peek out the window and try to see where they were. If he pushed his face right up against the glass and squinted, he could make out what was going on outside. Not for long though - he'd only seen one Togruta, but he'd barely been able to tell what it was because its lekku had been chopped off and it had an arm that was dangling from the rest of the body by a few threads of muscle. After that he had ducked back down, feeling very, very sick.

Luke shook his head, trying to banish the horrible image. The biggest problem right now was that it was dark and he needed to go back to his hiding spot. The boxes had become strange, looming shapes surrounding him and he did not like it. He wanted the tiny room where there were just a few tiny containers that did not scare him when he bumped into them.

That was the reason he did not spot the giant, tarp-covered lump near one end of the warehouse. He might have missed it entirely had it not been for the funny feeling that went down his spine as he passed it.

The feeling was not unfamiliar to him; he had felt it a few times before in his life. Luke tried not to think about it too much - the one time he had brought it up to Uncle Owen, it had been because he was sure that something was going to go wrong with the new droid his uncle had bought. Uncle Owen had scoffed and gruffly told him to focus on his own work and that he trusted Deebee, he never sold him junk. That had felt wrong too, though Luke could not explain why.

So his uncle had not been very happy when, a few days later, a passing transport of Jawas had passed by and promptly run off with the droid. Only then did Luke figure out that the problem, the wrongness, had nothing to do with his uncle's friend but with what was going to happen with the droid - but Uncle Owen liked it even less when Luke explained it that way. And then by the time the Jawas' sandcrawler came back around, the droid had been sold to someone else, who the Jawa had refused to say, which had made Uncle Owen grumpy all over again.

So Luke never talked about it much.

But he did not ignore the funny feeling either.

He looked around, squinting in the growing darkness. The feeling kept telling him to look in a certain direction, that something important was there, and despite his wariness of all the boxes piled around him, Luke padded quietly over, unsure what he was searching for but knowing he'd recognize it when he saw it.

That was when he saw the massive lump, taller than him. When he reached out, he felt cloth beneath his fingers, stretched tight. His fingers followed it down to the cables anchoring it to several hooks set into the floor. Still feeling his way around, he unhooked each of them with a snap.

Then, eyes wide, he grabbed at the tarp and pulled it off.

Leia bit down on a whimper as she wound a piece of cloth around the bite.

She had been stuck in the little room for hours. A whole day, even - or was it night? She was hungry, and tired, and dirty, and her arm hurt. It hadn't bled that much after the initial bite, which was good because bleeding was pretty scary, but it kept hurting, a throb that got better and worse at random times and for no reason she could think of. She had no idea why any of this had happened, and she could not call or scream or make even one sound because then all those things outside the room, outside the building, walking up and down the street, would hear her.

They heard her even when she made no noise. And when they couldn't see her. She had fled through the building all night, or at least it had seemed that way. The room she had thought was empty had not been. There had been a… a thing… hiding in the sheets of a bed and she hadn't noticed until it sat up and screeched at her. Leia did not know who or what it was, other than that it had not looked human. It had clawed its way free of the sheets, tearing them to ribbons, and then leaped after her, following her all the way out the room and through the entire level. The one thing that had stopped it were the stairs: they were broken, and Leia had just managed to leap up to the next level while the thing had not been able to follow her. All it could do was sniff confusedly and then scream at her angrily as she ran further and further up…

Leia had been so scared then, her fear almost choking her.

And when she had found another, even tinier room, another one of the things had burst through a vent in the ceiling. Everything was such a blur by now that she barely remembered what it looked like at all, just some smaller lifeform with long, long arms that it used to scrabble at her, and the only reason she'd gotten away was because it had been stuck in the air vent somehow and could only hang there, swinging its body futilely after her.

Leia didn't even know how that one had found her. She'd been so quiet…

Maybe they were smelling her? But how could she control her smell? And how far did it go? It felt like wherever she went, whenever she looked out a window, she'd see the same number of things below… like they were following her…

Finally she had found one small place, the smallest of them all, a broken refresher deep in another room, and barricaded the door – she was too short to reach the keypad and smash it so she had shoved the nearest thing, an end table, in front. Then she had checked for windows - there weren't any - and the vents - a tiny one - and even down the toilet and the drains, and then she had just lain there, she wasn't sure how long, maybe napping, dozing off, only to come awake as soon as her head started to fall.

Now she huddled by the sink, suppressing any pained noises as she tried to wrap up her arm. She'd found a medkit under the sink, an opened one with almost nothing in it, not even a bacta patch. There had just been one roll of bandages and some wipes, so she'd torn off the bloody bits of her sleeve that remained, washed the wound (with the wipes, there was no water), and was trying to tie on the bandage one-handed.

She squeezed her eyes shut as her arm throbbed again. If only her mother was there. And her father. Whenever she was hurt, whether from falling off trees (rare, but it had happened when she was very distracted), or bumping against something, or any other cuts or scrapes, they were always there with a bacta patch and a comforting word. Maybe they were coming for her right now, and they could fix her arm for her and take her away from this terrifying place…

But then Leia remembered, with a barely suppressed whimper, that she had driven off in a speeder from their vacation home. She didn't even know where she was so how could her parents? Hadn't they always told her to stay where she was if she got lost? But she hadn't, Captain Antilles had told her to run. She'd left him and the other guards… just abandoned them like a baby…

Maybe her parents weren't coming for her at all.

She shook away tears as she kept tying the bandage tighter (she hoped she was doing it correctly), and, without meaning to, she thought of her other mother. Her real mother.

An image of her floated through her mind, blurred but still distinct. Leia must have been very young when her mother had died because all her memories of her were so fuzzy. But bits of it were clear. Like her face. Her feelings. She'd been kind, Leia was sure of it. And sad, the ache of it almost as real as her own feelings. Leia loved her adoptive mother and father more than anybody else in the galaxy, but sometimes, when she was alone in the quiet of her room, she wondered about her real mother and father. Especially her mother. She did not remember her real father at all, not even what he looked like.

Her mother, though… Leia knew what she looked like. Especially after last week.

Leia looked around herself for a moment, then slowly pulled the holoprojector out of her pocket and activated it.

The tiny image of a woman floated before her. Leia stared at her longingly.

Mother…

She hadn't meant to find it. She'd been in her father's office, scrounging for a stylus because she'd lost her old one and she didn't want to be scolded before she went to her lessons. She'd opened a drawer that was probably supposed to be locked - it had never been open before. But that day it had been loose and, not thinking, she'd pulled at the latch and found the tiny little holoprojector, just sitting there.

Leia might still have not picked it up had it not been for the frisson that shot through her at the sight of it, a tingling all along her skin. That, and the small piece of flimisplast that had accompanied it. It was the sight of her own name that had made her read it and then pick up the holoprojector, for the flimsi had simply said, Leia - for when you are older and the galaxy is a safer place.

Well, she was plenty old now. And everyone said the Empire had brought peace and security to the galaxy, so it was perfectly safe, too.

Now, all alone, Leia stared at the tiny hologram of her real mother, placing it close to her face. She'd known who it was as soon as she turned it on, her fuzzy memories instantly recognizable in the face of this woman.

Mother.

What was her name? What had happened to her? She was dead, that was certain - Leia had known that since she was very, very small, though no one had ever confirmed it for her. Her adoptive parents did not talk about her a great deal, though Leia felt that they had loved her too. Leia did not even know her name. But she liked to imagine that she was wise and gentle and would have loved Leia very much.

I wish you were here, she thought to herself, squeezing the projector as if the still, staticky figure within might come alive and reach out for her, wrapping her in a warm, protective hug. I wish you could come and rescue me. She closed her eyes, sat back, and leaned back against the wall, wishing more than anything that her real mother could be there beside her.

A noise made her start and open her eyes.

It sounded like breathing, deep and terrifying. Leia strained her ears to listen.

She heard it then: the outer door sliding open.

They were here.

Leia stood up, panic filling her mind. She was trapped in here, there was no other way out. She could lock this door but the keypad was too high. Her eyes fell on the table she'd used to barricade the door, somehow knowing it wouldn't be enough. Maybe she could climb on it, then reach the keypad and lock it and stay really, really quiet? Leia hurried over as quietly as possible, almost tripping over a broken piece of ceramic, and had just moved the table into the right spot when the door opened, right in front of her.

The sound of heavy, mechanical breathing filled the air.

She backed away, almost falling again, at the sight before her.

Dark, flowing robes. A skull-like mask. A lightsaber hanging at his belt.

Leia had seen him before – on the HoloNet, during her lessons, on little images on projectors, through rumors spoken in whispers in the halls or between her parents. She knew that he was very, very powerful, more powerful even than her father; that he answered only to the Emperor; that wherever he went, death followed. She knew, too, that he had some strange powers, like the Jedi, only he used his for evil.

But she did not understand why, of all people in the galaxy, it was Darth Vader who was here, on this planet, in this city, in this tiny refresher

Or why he had found her.

She only knew one thing: that it could not be good.

Leia tried to run for the door, to dodge past him –

Only to be shoved back, as if something or someone had grabbed her whole body and tossed her back. She fell onto the hard floor, gasping. Quickly she sat back up, hearing his boot steps. He filled the entire room, staring down at her. Leia scrambled madly away - but then her entire body froze, unable to move, like that thing that had shoved her was now holding her where she was.

She struggled with all her might, trying to flail her arms and legs, but all that happened was that she was forced to her feet, still held in that spot. She could not move even if she wanted to, not even to turn around. She was left to stare all the way up at him - Vader.

"Princess Organa," he rumbled. His voice was even deeper than on the halloween videos, full of malice, and her stomach roiled. He knows me, how does he know me – "So you are the one that I sensed."

He approached and she shrank back, or tried to, feeling what she could only describe as waves of dark energy emanating from him. She could not even begin to comprehend what he was saying, her head was just one long, terrified scream.

"Fascinating. There is great power in you - and great fear. Senator Organa did well to hide you from me – but no longer."

And then he lifted a gloved hand and she felt a lance pierce through her head.

Leia opened her mouth to scream, but there was no sound and no strength in it. The pain was white-hot, a knife searing her skull, but some tiny peripheral part of her mind recognized it, knew it as Vader, as Vader's own mind or power or something trying to dig into her own –

No, no, no, no no no –

She was scared and she hated it and she wanted him out she wanted him out and she pushed back –

An answering force slammed into her mind hard enough to make her gasp. She was sure she must have fallen over from the impact of it, but she was so far into her own mind that she wasn't even aware of her own body anymore. She didn't feel anything except this great, awful pain.

No no no no get out get out get out - !

She pushed -

All of a sudden, the pain left her. Leia blinked, the blackness fading in a rush. She was in the same spot and so was Vader and he had dropped his hand.

Surprise crystallized the air around her.

Words, not her own, made themselves known., forming in her head as clear as if she had heard them being spoken out loud.

She is strong.

Leia knew with sure feeling that that was Vader. He was talking in her head.

She wanted him out.

Leia gathered all her energy again and pushed.

The thing, the intruder in her mind, faded even further and faster, but now she had the sense that it was not all her, that it was Vader pulling himself out voluntarily – and out of some instinct, some feeling that she had no source for, she felt like he was maybe – maybe testing her? Like one of the tutors Mother had given her who gave her harder and harder questions because they wanted to see what she knew before they got down to actually teaching her –

And at the thought of Mother, came back the thought of her real mother, the mother she had been calling out for…

"Impressive." Vader's voice cut through her memories like a vibroblade. "Your efforts are admirable."

Without warning, the needle bore back into her.

"But untrained."

Those were the last words she was aware of as she tried to push back, to build a wall, to do something – but the presence that was Vader knocked them inside like they were wisps of shimmersilk and reached into her mind - no no no no STOP – leafed through her memories of the day before like it was nothing, brushed through them back and back –

Stop, stop, please!

But the intruder crushed all hope of resistance, casually tossing aside her attempts to fight back, and all she felt was the roar of impenetrable darkness that was him, that was Vader hurtling into her mind with no thought or care -

Mother, help me! Help me, please!

And unbidden, the one faded memory of her real mother returned.

Leia grasped it like it was a life raft on an Alderaanian lake. Help me! she screamed, and whether she was calling out to her real mother or her adoptive one or even to herself, she did not know. All she knew was that in a moment of blind, writhing panic, she shoved that memory forward as hard as possible. It solidified and reformed around the image of the holoprojector, becoming stronger, sharper, and she pushed it forward again, as if that might stop Vader, as if her tiny, single memory of her real mother might actually shield her daughter from his assault -

Vader's presence reared back.

Suddenly her mind was freed from his, and she choked, drawing in great lungfuls of air, blinking tears back from the pain. The relief was so great that she fell back with a soft thud, realizing right at that moment that he was no longer holding onto her with that invisible force. She rubbed at her teary eyes -

Only for him to swoop down on her, his hand grasping her dress, actually grabbing her, to pin her where she stood.

"How do you know this woman?!" he roared, and it was like the blast of a storm. He was angry, angrier than when she had pushed him out, angrier than at any point since she had encountered him. " Why is she in your mind? "

Leia yelped, clawing at his gloved hand in an attempt to wriggle free.

"Answer me!" He actually lifted her off the floor, his mask bearing down on her, a monster from her worst nightmares. "Did Bail Organa tell you of her? How do you know of her?!"

She tried to turn away, only for him to drag her closer to him. She cried out, kicking in a desperate attempt to either reach him or get free.

" Tell me! "

Leia could not speak from fear. Mother, help me! I don't want to tell him…

"TELL ME!"

It was the sheer rage in his voice that unstopped her voice. "I don't – I don't know -"

" Do not lie to me, child!" His hand tightened where it was clenching her dress. "Tell me or I will force it from your mind!"

On cue she felt the invasive force of him drive into her mind, more painful than anything she had ever experienced. Tears blinded her. "Stop it, please!"

"Speak, then!" He swung her so that she was pressed against the wall.

I don't want to tell him! "I - I - I won't -"

Her feet left the ground; she was not being held against the wall, he had actually lifted her off the floor so that she was level with his mask. "You what? "

Danger, danger, run, her mind screamed at her. Her back hurt, her arm, her head - "She's - she's my-"

" Who? Who is she to you?!"

"Mother!" she finally gasped. "My mother, she's my mother - my - my real mother!"

He released her.

Leia slid all the way down the wall, crashing painfully on her bottom. For a moment, the shock of being freed so suddenly left her sitting there, blinking back tears, the blurred form of Vader before her. He appeared to have frozen on the spot.

Run, now! her mind screamed at her. She scrambled to her feet, crawling against the wall like a caught animal. Go!

She ran for the door.

Vader did not follow.

Leia fled into the next room, and then the hallway, then down the steps and leaping the gap until she found a back door and burst out. She was in a tiny alleyway and there were all those people – those things – around her, and remembering that they could sense her, find her, she turned to her left and began to sprint, not caring where she was going. She just needed to get away from Vader and his terrifying powers.

She had not gone more than a few feet when she heard a tell-tale screech. She did not need to look back to know they had found her, were following her.

Leia fled. Down one alley, then another, stumbling over boxes or almost crashing into walls and overhangs, she ran. Turning again, and then again, she tried to weave her way back to a bigger street, only to come smack up against a pile of broken homing droids, all piled together at the entrance and blocking her way. When she looked behind herself, she could see several of those things, humans but no longer looking human, their mouths dripping with blood and spit, snarling, eyes focused solely on her.

Keep running! her mind yelled at her.

She did, but she was tiring – her chest was burning and her lungs were on fire and she could barely breathe – and that was when she turned into a side street that came right up against a wall.

Screeching filled her ears. Leia wheeled around and saw them slavering, coming up on her, running or all on fours or even crawling on the ground. She closed her eyes and waited for them to take her.

Snap-hiss.

A low buzzing filled her ears, followed by a horribly familiar rhythmic breathing.

She opened her eyes - no no no he found me how did he find me -

A flash of crimson light. The body of one of the things chasing her split at the waist, falling into two neat, smoking halves. A whirl of a dark cloak, and the head of another was carved from its body, spinning through the air from the force of the blow to bounce wetly against the floor. Gray goo gushed out as the skull split open. The red blade slashed the air again and two others crumpled – right as the blade sliced down at an angle to lop the limbs off a third. Bodies fell in heaps and pieces around the black-robed figure. The shrieks gathered into a crescendo of pain and fury, and Leia slapped her hands over her ears. But even closing her eyes again could not blind her to the furious red slashes of light.

Until finally, all was silent, save for a faint hiss and mechanical breathing. Now he had her, and she wasn't sure what was worse, being attacked by those things or being in front of him . She heard his boots draw nearer, and she stumbled back until her back hit the wall and waited for him to grab her, for the knifing pain in her head.

Nothing happened.

Long seconds passed where she waited and waited, but still - nothing. She knew he was still there, she could hear the hum of his laser sword and the cycling of his respirator, but he wasn't doing anything to her at all.

Finally, she opened her eyes again.

Darth Vader was still there, as expected, feet from her. There was a smoking pile of bodies behind him; she could see scorch marks over them, see wisps of steam rising from the parts he had cut off. He was just standing there, staring at her, laser sword - was it called a lightsaber? - still ignited. That was a bad sign, she had seen what it could do, and she drew her body tight, sure he was going to use that on her now.

He doused it. It disappeared with another hiss and he hooked it back onto his belt without even looking.

Leia stared at it, then, very carefully, up at him.

"Are you hurt?"

She could not even comprehend the question, she was sure she had imagined it. So she made no answer.

He leaned towards her, making her heart pound in fright. "Are you hurt?" he demanded, louder.

She shook her head frantically as the thought passed through her mind: only by you.

He stepped back abruptly.

Silence fell between them again, tense, unsure.

He lifted a hand, but when she flinched back, he dropped it. "Princess-" he started to say, and she blinked, because he sounded hesitant. But then a distant shriek reached them. Leia jerked around, looking frantically, knowing by now what that would bring. Vader also snapped his head in the direction of the sound. "We must leave here," he told her.

Leia pressed back against the wall, wide-eyed. We? Did he mean her? Going with him? The last thing in the galaxy she wanted to do was go with him. She could only imagine it was so that he could push into her mind - that was the only way she knew to describe it - once they were away from the scary things chasing her.

Vader moved towards her. " Princess- "

She jerked away, drawing her arms protectively around her own body, and all she could remember was the awful, intrusive pain of him in her mind, sifting through her memories.

Vader stopped once more. For a moment, all she heard was far away screaming and the sound of his respirator. He seemed to be… thinking about what to say.

When he spoke again, his voice was somehow quieter. "Princess, you must come with me."

Leia stayed right where she was as she thought to herself, Why should I come with you?

"Would you prefer to be killed by these creatures?" Vader demanded sharply, as if he had heard her. He made a gesture as if to follow him. "Come. Now. Or I will leave you to be fed upon."

She stood there a moment, weighing her choices. It seemed that Vader wasn't going to hurt her, at least not yet. She shivered at the thought. That part of her, which so clearly remembered Vader grabbing her, hurting her, was telling her it would almost be better to stay here. She had been bitten already - her arm twinged in reminder - and it still had not been as bad, as scary , as what Vader had done to her…

But she did not want to die, and she knew, deep down, that the things following her would kill her; Vader was telling the truth about that. She did not want to be chased again, bitten again.

Pushing herself up mutely, she followed Vader's beckoning hand as he led her out the side alley.

And did her best not to look at the smoking parts of the bodies lying around them.

A daughter.

The alley was crowded with the detritus of a dead and dying city: furniture tossed about, utility droids that had been trampled, abandoned, or simply shut down as the power went out. In dirty piles were discarded clothing - or, perhaps, the remains of rotted bodies - that was little more than rags. Through open doors or tossed hastily on the ground was food, gone moldy or crawling with pests. All things to be avoided.

A daughter.

Shattered pieces of duracrete walls lay in huge pieces on the ground. When they reached the larger streets, they were met with the sight of abandoned speeders, overturned, knocked against walls, or most often, crowded and aflame in piles along intersections and corners. More droids, haulers, cleaners, security bots, lay in sparking pieces. Obstacles they had to traverse.

A daughter.

Vader pushed through all of it, slicing through the largest pieces of wreckage with his lightsaber, and all the while his mind spun: a daughter.

His child lived.

It was so inconceivable, such an impossible thing, that at first he had wanted to dismiss it as a lie, a fabrication concocted by the Organas to hit him at his core. But the Force had sung with the truth of what the girl had said - my mother, my real mother - so that now he found himself wanting to turn back to her time and again, to remind herself that she was truly there. The Force told him it was so, aware of her bright signature, but he found himself resisting the urge to look and look a second time and a third, to see this tiny child following him through the streets.

He had a daughter.

A pile of plasteel boxes, stacked haphazardly, blocked their way, and with barely a thought, he shoved them out of their path. His mind was still in turmoil, the structure of the last eight years of his life turned upside down.

I did not kill Padmé.

Her face formed before his mind's eye, bringing back the rage and the shock he had felt when he had first seen it in the Princess - his daughter's - mind. She had practically thrust the memory of her mother at him, as if hoping it might protect her from Vader's onslaught.

And it had worked, in ways neither had intended.

Our daughter.

Sidious lied.

But if Padmé had not died at his hand… if she had lived to birth their child… then what had happened to her? For it was certain that she had died; he had seen her funeral procession, viewing it once in a spasm of self-hatred. He had known she was alive on Mustafar, sensed it - which meant someone had to have taken Padmé off that accursed planet. Someone had to have pulled the child from her dying body and deposited said infant in the care of the Organas.

It came to him very quickly and with cold rage: Kenobi.

Who other but his former master could have arranged this conspiracy? It was Kenobi who had come with Padmé to Mustafar, Kenobi who had won his duel against Vader and left him burning on the side of a lava bank. Leather creaked as Vader balled his hands into fists, and the shattered lamp post in front of him was thrown aside with such force that it cracked the wall of the building it slammed into. The sound echoed up and down the empty street, and he heard the faintest rustle of cloth as the child behind him flinched.

He was so lost in his thoughts that it barely registered. It had to have been Obi-Wan Kenobi who had arranged for all this. He was certain the Organas had known of the plan, known whose child they were raising. Bail Organa had ever been Padmé's friend, and it was well-known that he and his wife, the Queen, had longed for a child and been unable to have one. How easy to have them take in his daughter, raise her as their own. Vader had been to Alderaan once or twice, even visited the Royal Palace. He was aware of their daughter, eight years old, born the same day as the Empire. The Organas had kept her well hidden from him, which he had been quite fine with at the time - he had no use and no tolerance for some female youngling trotting around him. Not that most younglings were comfortable with him in the first place.

Of course they would not want Vader to set eyes on her. Of course they would want to hide evidence of their crime… of their kidnapping.

The Organas had harbored rebellious sympathies as well, and like a tide, Vader could see the whole plan before him. A Force-sensitive child that they had taken from her real father, brainwashed into their traitorous beliefs, completely unaware of her heritage, to strike back for their wretched Jedi, their carcass of a Republic…

For the girl was indeed strong in the Force, and almost without thinking of it, Vader cast out for her presence again. She remained behind him, stumbling over the occasional crack in the ground and dodging smaller piles of trash, but her presence in the Force was so bright, so strong, as to be almost blinding. He was amazed that he had never sensed it before on those visits to Alderaan.

He had noticed it here, though. In this city that was so dead in the Force as to be almost Force-blind, that bright mote had been like a searing flame in pitch blackness. Intrigued, he had followed it despite it taking him well off the path he should have gone, drawn as much to its light as to the palpable terror that had been coming off it in waves.

And what he had found was…

Padmé's face arose, fresh and sharp.

No.

The girl looked so much like her as well…

No!

What he had found was a child.

His child.

Leia. He turned the name over and over in his mind. Yes… Leia Organa, princess of Alderaan. He had known, too, that she was adopted, remembered hearing and promptly dismissing that piece of information on his visits. Most royal families made at least a show of trotting out their children for Imperial visits - perhaps they hoped that he would not dare too much in front of them. He had not deigned to see the Alderaanian princess, though, nor had the Organas volunteered for them to meet.

For good reason.

His lightsaber hilt threatened to crack with the force he was gripping it with.

Once again unthinkingly, he cast his mind back to the child ( his child ), trailing reluctantly behind him. For all her fear, her initial refusal to come along, the girl had been following him well enough the last few hours as they navigated the dying city. They had been lucky so far, having not encountered more than a few of the maddened, sickened creatures that had attacked them. They had been easily dispatched with a swing of his lightsaber or a sharp shove against a nearby wall. They seemed to feel neither pain nor shock, not even at the loss of multiple limbs or an entire part of their body. It was disconcerting.

The girl's foot caught on a step and she almost stumbled before catching herself, but a tiny gasp escaped her. Distress emanated constantly from her, distracting in how it thrummed at him, calling for his attention.

A strange feeling, almost completely foreign to him, attempted to rise in his chest.

Perhaps he ought not to have probed her mind with such force.

He crushed the thought and slashed his saber with such force that it sent the top of a blocking support beam flying out of sight. Had he not done so he would not have learned of their relationship. It was… necessary.

And the Princess… she would accept it in due time, once she knew who he was to her. Not now - her fury and terror were still too fresh, too palpable, for him to broach the subject. But later, when she had settled, grown used to him… then he would find the right time to inform her.

For it was quite certain she did not know, and that sent another wave of anger through him. Lies and betrayal, eight years of it. Once they were off this damnable planet, he would ensure that Kenobi paid for his treachery. He would take his time with it, too, letting him know the true depths of his failure.

And as for his current master…

Vader did not think that far just yet. The girl was young and clearly untrained; her futile attempt at shielding had been surprisingly strong, but that was out of sheer fear and childish stubbornness. He had broken it down easily. But with more time and experience…

He cut the thought off at the sound of cracking glass in one of the small side streets. A throaty moan seeped out of the shadows. It was followed by a second voice, then a third. These things were unintelligent, but they were quite good at calling out for others.

Vader swung around for the princess, who was staring, large-eyed, towards the noise. "We must move quickly." He could kill them but this was a large area with numerous passageways for others to crawl out of; there was a large risk they'd be surrounded.

Which would be of little concern for him… but now he had this child whose safety he must ensure, a child most likely sheltered and lacking any sort of way of defending herself. It was galling; he would have to rectify that as soon as they were off-planet.

Vader scanned the street ahead until he found the clearest path through, and even that required him to Force push aside a massive cargo hauler, fallen on its side. It skidded along the ferrocrete and came to a crash against a wall, sending mechanical parts tinkling across the street. That left a gap between the opposite wall and the hauler that led to the next street, large enough for both of them to fit through.

Something moaned behind them, quite close.

Without thinking, Vader turned, pushing Leia behind him and drawing his lightsaber. At the sound of it igniting, the girl gasped.

Vader held up a hand, stilling her noises. He strained to hear through the buzz of the mask's audio receptors. Something was snuffling from within one of the buildings; from another, he could detect shuffling footsteps drawing nearer.

He saw the Dug first, it's whiskered mouth panting, drool falling from sharpened teeth as maddened eyes fell on them. A surge of hate flooded him at the sight of it. Then a Trandoshan emerged, great rips marring it's scaly skin. And then stumbling two and three at a time, a mass of humans, limbs missing, flesh gouged from their chest, their abdomens, their faces, skin blackened with inner rot.

And they were all looking at them.

The Trandoshan growled. As one, they rushed towards them.

Vader shoved Leia through the gap, taking just half a second to make sure there was none coming from up ahead. That was enough time for theTrandoshan to reach him and leap forward, screaming.

He slashed his lightsaber through the air, slicing its legs off.

The Trandoshan howled again as it landed with a splat on the ground, bereft of any legs to catch itself. Its arms flailed wildly, but another slash deprived it of those as well. It flopped on the ground, an armless torso, and for a second Vader regarded it with a strange churning in what was left of his gut - but then he whirled about, cutting the head off one of the human attackers, then back, bisecting the Dug down the middle. The deaths of their fellows meant nothing, they were still coming - the loss of limbs and even lower halves of their body wasn't stopping them. For a half-second, Vader assessed the situation, a realization coming to him: the ones that had stopped were the ones that had lost their heads, or whatever the cranial equivalent was.

The thought was gone the next instant, put aside for later. He backed through the gap, gripped his saber and threw it in a spinning arc.

Screams filled the air as it chopped through half of a dozen of them, cutting through torsos and chests and backs. Bodies fell, smoking, and Vader pushed back until he felt himself bump into the edge of the gap.

"There!" the Princess cried out suddenly, pointing down.

Vader jerked back to see the Trandoshan, what was left of it, writhing on the ground. It was nothing but a head and chest and abdomen, flopping uselessly, and at first he wasn't sure what the girl had seen: until, before his eyes, he saw something wriggling from the stump of its leg. Guttural growls filled the air that turned into pained whimpers - and then, before both their eyes, an entire leg burst out of the stump in a gush of blood and pus. And then the other leg - and then the arms.

Regeneration, Vader recalled; it was a trait shared by all Trandoshans. But that normally took days, weeks. This was a far faster regrowing of limbs than any normal Trandoshan should possess.

He had no time to consider that, though, for the Trandoshan had leaped, wobbling, onto its newly formed feet. Hunching, eyes predatory, it launched itself again at Vader.

Vader called his lightsaber back, and as he snatched it out of the air, he plunged it straight through the thing's eye.

But there were still others behind it.

Vader whirled around and practically pushed the princess forward. "Move!" With a backhanded slash, he sliced an infected human from shoulder to hip before reaching the princess.

They darted through the streets, Vader trying to keep them on the main course, avoiding any sounds of yowling or shuffling or, in one case that made the girl gasp, wet crunching. She quickly fell behind his long strides and he shortened them marginally, making sure he did not lose her. She was going as fast as she could, sweat soaking her face and her white dress, but he did not stop until they had crossed two blocks and it was relatively quiet.

His stop was so sudden, in fact, that the child almost crashed into him, yelping a bit as she walked into his cape, but she seemed too frightened and too tired to really care, gulping air, clutching her sides. Her braided bun was coming loose and her face was shining with perspiration. Pain and fear continued to roll off her in waves.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded for the second time since they'd met.

The girl was shaking too hard to answer.

"Did they hurt you?" he shouted, an unbecoming fear starting to form.

The girl gasped, this time in fear, stumbled away from him, and tripped over the curb, falling on her back.

Vader forced himself to stop, biting back a snarl of rage. Instead he scanned her quickly, not seeing any noticeable wounds. They would have shown up on that white dress she was wearing anyway.

Something, a container perhaps, tumbled in one of the alleys to their side.

The princess sucked in a fearful breath and stumbled to her feet, hurrying back towards Vader, and that, at least, was enough to dissipate some of his anger. She was smart enough to recognize that she had a better chance with him than out there alone. He stepped in front of her, trying to assess the source of the sound.

It did not happen again, nor could he see anything. It was rapidly growing darker, not that it mattered for him. But it would make it harder for the princess to keep up, stumbling around the ruined streets with their rubble and barriers.

He angled his head back down the main street. It was a smoking, obstacle-riddled ruin, but it was the surest, shortest way out of this section, and he knew there were some apartments further down. They could rest there.

"Come," he said shortly, gesturing the girl forward.

She followed.

I know in Disney canon, Darth Vader is kind of an unknown figure up until, I dunno, when the Rebellion starts becoming a bigger threat, but I am opting to ignore that! I find it more fun (and challenging) to write their relationship when Leia knows of Vader and is kind of scared of him, as opposed to not knowing who he is.