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It's risky to travel, now, and yet: she goes.
She knows the risks. The first order hunts her with a zeal that even the Empire never did, and many of the world's whose borders she could slip through, even at the height of Palpatine's tyranny, are now closed to her.
Naboo, of course, remains the exception. She's all but treated as a star citizen, given an audience with the queen with less resistance than any other.
"Greetings, daughter of the far star," the Queen says. Leia tries not to laugh at the overly familiar if formal greeting. She has been on Naboo once, in her life, and then, only as long as the battle lasted (and terrified, the entire time, of having to see him); she does not wish nor want any ties to this planet.
And yet.
"Thank you," she says, bowing, then neatly pivoting to another conversation. "I'm seeking - "
"I'm aware of who you seek," the Queen says, and Leia looks up, trying to evaluate the young monarch's face. Her face is drawn into a line, unamused; it occurs to Leia, for the first time, that the monarch might see her as a threat. Wouldn't want to lose their fiercest defender, of course; Leia smiles, but it is a bitter one.
"We will take you to him," the Queen says. "He will be in the Lady's Memorial Garden."
Of course he is. She couldn't imagine finding him anywhere less awkward.
"That's not necessary," Leia says, her knees aching from kneeling for all of the five-minute audience. The little Queen raises her eyebrows. Leia wonders if she was even born during the last battle of Theed - she doubts it.
"Ramé will show you the way," the Queen says, snapping her fingers. Leia wonders if she was ever so haughty, then brushes the thought away. Ramé appears before her, red and gold dress swishing around her hips, and holds out a hand.
And dammit, she takes it. Her knees pop as she gets up, but Ramé, wisely, does not comment.
"Come," she says, in a thick Naboo accent. Leia remembers that before Palpatine, Naboo was isolationist; she wonders how much of the planet still hews to that tradition.
Has this girl ever left their marble and gold tower? Does she know the suffering of the universe?
She clenches her hands, knowing she is picking faults with the girl because she fears where they are going. She's older now, and so is he. Far older now. She wonders: will he have lost any power with his age? Will he be shorter, weaker? An old man on a ventilator?
It's hard to imagine that he won't still be dangerous.
"It is not far," Ramé sing-songs, and Leia finds herself almost glad for the girl. She doesn't know if he'll try to hurt her, but she knows if he pushes her that far, she wants witnesses.
Ramé leads her through a, frankly, decadent garden. There are "gardeners" of Naboo's so-called Agri-Corps on every level; no one raises even so much of an eyebrow as a young boy calmly levitates a rose branch into his hand and trims it. Leia bites back a harsh word - she is not mistress here and it's not his generation who had to always hide such talents.
The closer she gets, the more she feels him. He casts a long, tall shadow over her mother's memorial garden; even without the force at his beck and call, she spots him from a distance: still tall, still commanding.
And he, Force-blindness be damned, turns toward her, sensing her all the same.
She bites her lip. He is not infirm, not an invalid whose hand she could hold and leave, disappointed, but, in many ways, relieved.
"Gardner," Ramé says, kneeling like he is some king to be done tribute to. Leia's stomach turns and she takes a deep breath and tries to fight the overwhelming urge to pull her blaster or run.
"Don't," Vader says, or Gardner, or whatever he chooses to call himself now. She isn't fooled by a changed name. She has seen his true measure. "Rise, child."
She does, eager, all but glowing from being talked to by her elder. "This is - "
"I know who it is," he says; glancing toward her. She sees evaluation in his eyes. His respirator inhales and exhales, a full breath cycle, before he nods in her direction, so humbly that she barely sees it.
"Leave us, child," he says, patting the girl on the shoulder. Like a father, she thinks, but the thought invokes so much bile she has to bite her lip.
"But the Queen - " Ramé, all unsure childhood, balks. Leia doesn't have the heart to point out that Vader killed dozens - perhaps hundreds - of children just like her, but she thinks it.
She wonders if he does too.
"Tell the Queen that I appreciate it, but I require no protection from my own daughter," he says, eyes sparkling with a bit of mischief. Were those eyes sparkling with mischief when he had tortured on the Death Star? She tries to center herself, the way Luke taught her to, but she was never good at it.
"Your - oh," Ramé says, turning back toward her with a startled glance, then back to him with whiplash speed. She can tell Ramé is trying to find some way to reconcile them; some sort of connective tissue. She will fail, Leia hopes. She favors her mother.
Vader - Gardner - crosses the few steps between them and grabs her hand, squeezes it tight. His hands are cold; he no longer hides the metal prosthesis in leather gloves.
Like Luke. Luke, who lost his hand to Vader. Luke, who abandoned her only to return in her darkest hour. Luke, who gave his life for her and led her here, inadvertently. Luke, who she hadn't spoken to in ten years before dumping her son on him, and all for this man.
"Leia," he says, her name invested with so much longing it hurts, and it isn't fair, it isn't fair. "Leia."
She stares up at him and feels...lost. "Hi," she says, bile rising in her throat, and she repeats to herself in a mental plea, over and over again: he can't hurt her now. He can't.
That discomfort, is, however, unnoticed; he moves forward with a speed a man in his seventies shouldn't have; it isn't the old armor now, not anymore, but she feels the hard edge of his respirator as he embraces her, pulls her into a tight hug that reminds her of her true father, and her heart breaks for all the wrong reasons.
"I never thought you'd come," he says, in a voice so choked up that she almost laughs, to think Darth Vader could long to see her this much. He's not wrong, however, in his appraisal of her; she did not want to come. She would have never come to him if she didn't have to; never come to him if Ben had not robbed her of every option but this. Luke, Amilyn, Ackbar, Mothma: somehow, this old man has outlived them all, waiting for this.
He is all but crushing her with the love he had, evidently, been saving up for an unknown child between rounds of mass-murder and tyrannical crackdowns. She can feel his old heart thump against her ear and wants, overwhelmingly, to cry or to shout or to push or, in some small part, to surrender to being held, to let someone else handle the universe and stroke her hair and tell her that everything will be okay.
It's overwhelming; despite knowing she has to bring him to her side, she slides out of the hug, plays it off as stepping back to see him fully.
The outfit is somewhere between the robes he favored in the nightmares of her childhood and the Jedi robes she's seen in historical holos of him, ones she'd watched with Luke once when they were young and nothing was as complicated as it is now. Bits of the old outfit remain: the respirator, the long, billowing black cloak, the bottom half of the mask that slides over his mouth. The rest, he has replaced with an outfit that wouldn't look out of place here - dark black slacks, a long, beige tunic. His eyes sparkle in blue, and he is overwhelmingly, undeniably happy to see her.
And she fights the urge to not be sick, because she hates that he is happy to see her, hates that he lives and lives well. It's not fair that he still clings to life, not fair that he is as healthy as he can be when her own father lies as atoms of starstuff, dead and long gone, and not in small part due to this old man's hand.
But - she has no choice. She takes a deep breath, and looks at him, and says: "Can we talk — in private?"
And the smile fades, slightly, but he nods. "Of course."
She does not complain when he leads her by the hand through his gardens, but she's tempted to. Instead, she looks at what he built here: there are so many of his Agricorps, here; force-sensitives using the force to help make dozens of glorious flowers grow. Naboo's little secret.
"There are fields of produce, as well," he says, eerily close to reading her mind. She wonders if perhaps he has stopped taking the shots of Ysalimari blood that were her sole demand in regard to what to do with the issue of him on Endor. "We feed fifty thousand of the poorest people here on Naboo."
"Lovely," she says, her voice flat. If anyone else had brought up such a program, she would praise them. With him, she still waits for him to find a way to poison her with such knowledge.
They must be an odd pair; she notices many of Vader's acolytes look up, seeing their old leader carrying along what had to be one of the most notorious wanted pictures in the galaxy.
But none of them look so much as startled by him, by her. A Tortuga woman with wide, purple montrails looks toward her and mouths welcome home, sister.
She wonders how many have come here after the war, and realizes, too late, that she had said it out loud.
"More than you'd think," he says, turning back toward her. "The purges were never as ...complete, perhaps, as Palpatine willed them. Quite a few people come here, sooner or later; some were in the Empire, some Rebels, some simply there, and some too young to remember."
As if that changed anything. Leia is well aware the list of missing, presumed dead Jedi is long. That he spared some didn't matter, except that it did, because they are here, peacefully feeding the poor.
Would Ben have done better here, with pruning sheers instead of a lightsaber? She feels like she is suffocating and for the first time in his presence, she's pretty sure it's not his fault. She gasps, and he squeezes her arm. He looks toward her and she looks away.
She's never been good at looking him in the eye.
- - -
His house is not what she expected. It's small; near her mother's grave, near the water. It's neither dilapidated not impressive; somewhat middle of the road. He opens the door and she steps into it. It smells of damp earth and light rains.
"Take a seat," he says, and she does, curling up on one of three stuffed chairs - that is surprising. She hadn't thought him one for company - by all accounts that she has read (and she has read them all, has felt compelled to read them all) - Vader lived alone, all his time in the imperial military. Never on holiday. Never accompanied by a friend, a lover. Did he buy them for her, for Luke? For Ben? Did he and Luke have tea here, once? Did they look at her chair and comment on her missing?
She can't help but glance around as she hears the familiar move of liquid being poured; a glance toward him tells her he's putting on a kettle.
"Tea," he says, sounding preoccupied. "It's fresh, you know."
"Okay," she says, throat feeling choked with leaves and dirt, because it's still so hard to talk to him but she needs - needs - him on her side, so desperately.
The room is as spartan as she would have expected it to be; no paintings, no ornate art. There's a notebook on the table across from her with bits of paper sticking out of it. In curiosity, she flips it open, dreading half-made battle plans, secret military codes; instead, she finds it full of hand-drawn portraits, sketches. She recognizes only a few people in them - herself, both younger and more recently; Luke, so many of Luke; and more still of their birth mother, who looks so little like her official portraiture but so much like Leia that she recognizes her immediately. Then there's General Kenobi, repeatedly; a Tortuga woman that looks like Fulcrum but, statisically speaking, probably can't be. Then a rough sketch of her father, her true father, during a speech - that one takes her breath away, and she hastily turns the page.
"I didn't know you could draw," she says, trying not to hyperventilate, to focus on anything that isn't Alderaan, isn't the Empire.
"Hm," he says; the kettle whistles, deafening. Figures he would use the old-fashioned kind. "Wasn't much to do in the trenches, back then."
"Oh, the old, odd mur - " she stops herself just short of finishing the sentence about how the old odd murder or two must have lost its spark, but she doesn't. He bangs the cups with perhaps more noise than is necessary, and she thinks of all the years they've been living apart and how much they hated one another before Luke decided they were one happy family despite being anything but. "Sorry," she says, though she's not in the habit of saying sorry.
"Old habits," he says, in a clipped tone that suggests he's willing to look past it. He comes back to her then, eyes a bit less besparkled, and hands her a warm cup of tea. It smells almost exactly like her childhood, warm fainu tea with xastra mixed in, just the lightest touch of spice to it -
"Here," he says, gently. He reappears with a couple biscuits and a bottle of a pale, milky substance besides. "I didn't know if you - "
"I do," she says, pouring it into her drink. It tastes almost like her mother's; the ingredients just a very slight difference to what she grew up with. Ingredients that shouldn't exist -
Her eyes widen.
"Naboo had the largest seed bank remaining of Alderaani crops," he says, shrugging. "Figured I would try to - "
"I can't - " She shakes her head, hating how damn hard this is, how much she wants to hit him, how aware of how proud she would be if it was anyone else. "It doesn't - "
"I know." He waves a hand. "Nothing will."
They are silent for a long moment; she sips her tea and wishes, desperately, once more, that Luke hadn't left her. He'd always been the better at finding the ways the jagged edges of their strange family fit together.
"Leia," he says, reaching one hand out. "Why are you here?"
"That obvious, huh?" She says, grimacing. Even Han would be better at this than she is, though Han would probably have tried to shoot him again. Which, all things considered, she's still not sure would be a bad thing.
"Not that I'm not glad you're here, but... It's obvious something is bothering you. And that you come without Luke - "
"Luke is dead," she says, matter of fact, then sees his face crumple and realizes he didn't know, couldn't know. His hand grips the small table, his eyes shut tight as his metal claws leave deep marks in his furniture.
"How-? How long?" He looks at her, breathing deeply, and she sees nothing but the pain in him.
"A few weeks ago," she says. "Ben murdered him."
"Ben?" He looks up in surprise. "Your...Ben?"
"Yes," she says, and she sees what must be tears on that old face. So, Luke had told him. She had wondered. She had never expressly forbade him to, but they both agreed Ben would never meet his grandfather. Well - Leia had agreed for them, and had eventually brow-beaten Luke into her way. And then not talked to him for an entire decade, because she was afraid he might convince her otherwise.
"Yes," she says. "He's...." She bites her lip, and the words tumble out. "He killed Han, too."
"Oh, Leia," he says, and before she can tell him not to, he is out of his chair, curling those big arms around her, and for a moment, just one moment, she lets him hold her, lets him pet her hair before she remembers who he is and what he's done and can't - just can't - allow him to touch her like that, like a father.
"I'm so - "
"Don't," she says, and grips his arms. "Look, I need - " she swallows, breathes deeply. Focuses on the mission. "We can't - we can't fight against Ben, not now. Luke and Han are gone and we only - I'm not - I need you to deal with Ben."
"Me? To - "
"I need," she says, gripping him so hard she can hear the squeak of his prosthesis. "I need Darth Vader."
"Oh, Leia - " He sighs, and looks away for a moment.
"Please, don't make me beg," she says, and hates how plaintive she sounds. "I can't do this alone, and - " And what is there to say? That there was a time he could kill her, could kill Luke? That he is the only one left who can do it, who she already hates too much to consider hating him more for this?
"Leia," he says; his hand reaches up and strange, metal fingers run through her hair and she tries, so hard, not to slap them away. "Of course."
Her stomach clenches; the relief that she wanted is nowhere to be found. Still, she knows this is the right move, even if she doesn't want it to be.
"Ben," she says, swallowing. "Worships you. If he sees you with us, he might - " She sighs. It is foolish to hope that he will turn away from the path he is walking, especially after Luke and Han, but if - maybe, if Vader could become the Gardner, then there was a slim chance Ben could walk away too.
But even if he did - would she ever be able to see him without bile in her heart?
And if he didn't turn back - well. She expects him to complain about what she wants, what she is asking of him. The murder of a boy, his grandson, barely older than her or Luke were when they were in the war.
But he doesn't, simply sighing softly and stroking her hair. The uncharitable part of her heart whispers that he is, perhaps, used to killing children.
"A moment, I have to leave instructions," he says. He opens the door and is gone for a moment, and Leia breathes deeply, relieved to have a moment to herself.
Without anyone there, the tears she has held in since Luke, since Han, since Ben, all flow down. She jabs at them angrily. She is so, so tired.
It still takes all of her effort not to scream when he re-appears, holding the rumbled remains of the armored uniform of a long-dead man. She hadn't known he'd kept it. "The lightsaber," he says, "will have to be rebuilt. I don't have the supplies for that here."
"That can be arranged," she says, though she doesn't know how she's going to get her hands on any kyber. The Empire wiped most of it out, but she's sure someone, somewhere will have some.
His hand wanders over his counter and he pulls up a package of red pills, but she shakes her head. "Don't bother," she says and he looks up, surprised.
"Are you sure?" He asks. He looks at her, sizing her up, no doubt.
"Yes," she says, though it's a lie. She isn't sure she's ready to have him in her head again, but she knows she needs him at his most dangerous.
He folds his bloody armor into a small knapsack, then tosses it over his shoulders, like it's the most natural thing in the world, and she realizes: he is going to be going with her, sticking by her side, like a demon on her shoulder.
She's pretty sure if Luke is a force ghost, he's laughing his ass off at them both.
But maybe that's okay, she thinks; desperate times, desperate measures.
For now, she takes his hand, leads him to her ship, and tries, very hard, to breathe.