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“I know you’re here,” Leia says. Anakin sighs, and forms a physical body.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I swear, Senator, that I did everything I could to reach him, but… something, or rather, some one , blocked me, and I took the chance of going against what you asked of me… far, far too late.”
(He never calls her Leia, never “my daughter”. He has no right, and he knows it.)
Leia laughs, but it’s the broken and humorless laugh of someone who’s seen and done and lived through too much. He knows that laugh. He’d had that laugh by the time of his Fall.
And Leia probably since around the same age.
“Is there any way to escape your legacy, Vader?” she asks. Anakin forces himself not to flinch at the name. Vader is not his name, but Vader’s actions still are.
“Perhaps,” he says, “I feel a light, in the distance. A hope for Ben Solo within Kylo Ren that would have been impossible to find within myself when I was… if any dark timeline comes, however… hope may very well be gone in a moment.”
Leia sighs.
“And Luke?” she asks.
Anakin smiles, at that.
“Alive and safe,” he says, but then he feels his smile drop, “He’s… finally confronting the negative side of the Jedi, and… I don’t think that he likes what he’s found. Ben… Luke thinks it’s his fault.”
Leia shakes her head.
“No,” she says, “He did what he could.”
Anakin laughs, at that, because it sounds like the never ending argument with Obi-Wan that his own Fall wasn’t his Master’s fault.
“My son is too much like my Master,” he says, “And I really hope that you can convince him that Ben’s Fall wasn’t his fault faster than I can convince Obi-Wan he wasn’t at fault for mine, because I’ve been trying for actual centuries.”
“Centuries?” Leia asks. Anakin shrugs.
“Time is weird, in the Force,” he says. “Just… just know it wasn’t all his fault. Snoke has… more control than the Jedi think possible, and…”
Anakin sighs.
“There are some things that I just can’t tell Luke,” he says. “When he already idolizes and victimizes me. I made my choices, in the end, even if Sidious could…”
“Could what?”
“I…” Anakin shakes his head. Leia deserves to know. “There’s… a… a Leach Bond. It… it’s a very different monster than a traditional bond, and… I had one with Palpatine… and Ben has one with Snoke. It makes us… far more likely to be obedient to them, and… it’s really Dark. Luke found Ben’s and… well, here we are.”
You would think being one with the universe could help with getting over trauma.
Leia just stares at him.
“Luke said that he’d been planning your Fall since you were nine,” she says. “But this is…”
Anakin huffs his own broken laugh.
“I never want your pity,” he says. “I never want your forgiveness. I… I just want you to understand why Ben would do this… neither of us had good reasons, but… it’s… it’s very complicated… and I am the reason for every part of this.”
(But Kylo had welcomed everything Anakin had fought. A thought that Anakin tries not to dwell on. Hadn’t he already destroyed his own family enough?)
He decides not to specify, not to tell Leia that he had been the one to ask Luke to check on Ben, the reason the final straw broke. Leia just sighs.
“And here we are,” Leia says. Anakin shakes his head.
“I suppose so,” he says. “And… hey, I think I found a pattern.”
“A pattern?”
Anakin smiles.
“For our new heroes,” he says, “And, don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll see it, too.”
Leia hmms.
“But nothing is certain, is it,” she says.
Anakin smiles, thinking about… long ago.
“Always in motion, the future is,” he says, “But, well… this seems very assured.”
Leia just shrugs
“I’ll take your word for it,” she says, “For now, I have work to do.”
Anakin nods, and fades away.
Padme’s daughter has work to do.