Chapter Text
The first thing she noticed as she woke was the pain. She wasn’t expecting it and was more than a little surprised to realize it felt like her skin had shrunk over her muscles and that her joints all ached as if they had been wrenched almost apart.
Normally, the pain only came after she was awake enough to realize that Luke was still gone.
The ache in her heart pulsed, and Leia made herself breathe slowly as the last thought crossed her mind twice more, checking itself against reality. Yes, that faint light that had been ever-present in her mind was still dark and cold. Yes, she could not find her brother. Yes, Luke really was still gone.
Riding the waves of anguish that the unavoidable next thoughts brought (yes, that meant Han and Chewie were gone too) Leia forced herself to open her eyes and suffered another shock.
This was not her room.
Not Coruscant. Not planetside on any of the places that she had visited in the past weeks. Not her quarters on the ship that had almost started to feel like home until the moment when she had realized she might never find home ever again.
Not her room.
Pale walls, sparse furnishings, a musty smell like it was rarely used. No windows, but an open door, and the light seeping from that portal brought more brightness than she would have expected. Looking down at herself, but hesitating to move, Leia noted thin, white sheets, soft and well worn, slightly greyed from use.
“You’re awake,” a gentle, low voice murmured, and Leia turned to face the woman who slowly entered the room. Dark hair just barely touched with grey, a concerned, motherly look (which touched another pain, older but more painful again for the new pains stacked atop it), and cheap if serviceable clothes. Desert style and well worn, like the face of the woman. Like the sheets.
Shmi.
“Oh hell,” Leia groaned, squeezing her eyes shut and trying desperately not to remember. To her surprise, that earned a soft chuckle.
“Not quite, but close enough,” Shmi’s voice was smiling, Leia knew. Not at all offended, but maybe a little curious. “And you seem to have caught the worst of it.”
The tentative, “I’m sorry,” died in the back of Leia’s throat. She’d done enough apologizing these past months. So much it had almost crushed her even before all of this. “Thank you,” she managed instead. “You definitely saved me.”
There was a gentle shush of fabric moving and the bed dipped slightly. “It isn’t wise to be caught in the desert during a storm. We’ve been wondering how you got here.”
Hazy figures tugged at Leia’s memory, but she couldn’t remember them distinctly. Everything after she had landed was still mostly a blur. Except that brief introduction.
“I’m Shmi Skywalker. You’re safe.”
“To be honest,” Leia said, struggling to sit up without wincing, “I don’t think I could explain it. I’m not really sure how it all happened.”
That was a lie. Or at least a violent exaggeration of the truth. But there was no way she was going to try and explain it. Not to this woman and not now. Maybe someday…
“Cliegg is worried,” Shmi started, and seeing Leia’s confusion added, “My husband. We don’t get many visitors out here, and almost everyone from the planet knows how to not get caught in a storm. You aren’t from here,” she said, giving Leia a brief look over, “and he’s worried what it could mean.”
“Why? I’m not dangerous.” Also a lie, but a much less obvious one.
Shmi hesitated. “The last time I let strangers into my home who were from off world to protect them from a storm, one was a Jedi. And he took my son. It is… difficult to not see the similarities.”
“I’m sending you to someone safe. Probably the only one who can help you actually fix everything. Do whatever is necessary. And don’t look back.”
The words were a cold impression on Leia’s mind, and she swallowed slowly. “I’m not a Jedi,” she said carefully. “I never could be.”
“Most of us can’t,” Shmi said, a cautious look on her face. “That is a… unique way to put it.”
It took two more swallows and a deep breath before Leia managed in a tight voice, “My brother… was. Was… a Jedi.”
It was all she could manage. There was probably more she ought to add, to explain. Luke hadn’t really been a Jedi in the way that Shmi would be familiar with, if she had met a "real" Jedi. Temple trained Jedi. Child stealing Jedi (and Luke had never really gotten over that when he had realized how it had to have been, and what had happened to his—their fa— to Vader).
A warm hand covered hers, and Leia looked into eyes filled with deep sympathy and compassion. “I’m sorry. So sorry that you lost someone you loved.”
“Everyone,” Leia croaked, the grief lodged in her throat. “It was everyone, over and over—“
Alderaan and the rebels and planet after planet that they couldn’t bring into the new Republic and Luke and Han and Chewie and Artoo and—
“And don’t look back.”
She couldn’t. Couldn’t stop. Her eyes firmly fixed on the past, Leia cried and cried. Cried like she hadn’t allowed herself for years. Not since her mother and father had buried their friends as traitors and refused themselves even a single tear, just to protect her. She cried with grief and rage and hopelessness, sobbing in Shmi's arms, words and whispers of comfort washing over her in gentle, unintelligible waves. And Leia knew, no matter how much it hurt, she could never go back.
But she wasn’t strong enough not to look. Not yet.
Maybe never.
The Lars homestead was exactly as Luke had once described it and also nothing like his description at all. The basic framework was all there. Buildings mostly below ground level, different sections to spare power when it was scarce and confuse possible raiders, desert colors, few doors, and sand. Sand everywhere, no matter what you did. Always, all the sand. But that was just a feature of Tatooine, he’d said. All the sand in the worlds.
It was also a home. The ceilings were painted with dark designs in contrast to the pale walls. There were some tapestries and it had a very well used kitchen that smelled of earth and something Leia couldn’t quite place. For a place where nothing was supposed to grow, there was still the occasional splash of pale green and all the Larses were adamant that they were on a farm.
Leia hoped it was true, though it was a bit difficult to believe them.
Shmi was also mostly what Leia had expected, and nothing like. Luke's mentions of a grandmother that had died before he was even born had spoken of her kindness and gentleness, conveyed to him by stories from his aunt and uncle.
He hadn't mentioned that Shmi was strong. And brave (it took a lot to comfort a close friend, much less a complete stranger).
Leia let her fingers skim across the wall as she was led out of her room and down the hall. The tightness of her skin made it agitating, but there was something grounding in the action so she didn’t stop. Just took slow, careful steps as her bones creaked and her muscles stretched and eventually relaxed. Taking the few steps up to the open courtyard Shmi was leading Leia to was a little more painful, but she managed.
“So what brought you to our crack in the galaxy?” Cliegg had asked the moment she had reached out to shake his hand, carefully not wincing at the firm pressure.
Sensing his distrust (and was that just her experience talking, or was she feeling the Force at all, why hadn’t Luke ever explained the difference?) Leia hesitated before she answered. “I’m looking for something. A—A new start, I think. Or maybe just something better than where I was.”
“So you came here?” was the patently skeptical answer. “Whoever sold you that story was full of—“
“Cliegg,” Shmi cut him off firmly. “You didn’t let her finish.”
“It’s alright,” Leia said, shrugging. “I know I’m out of place here. I understand his disbelief.”
“Do you?” he pressed, looking her up and down, taking in her fine, dark clothes (she wouldn’t think about mourning, not under his scrutiny) and carefully styled if now mussy hair. She knew her skin was still mostly soft, even after all her adventures. There might be a few new stress lines on her forehead and around her eyes, but there was nothing about her that said she had ever been exposed to the idea of manual labor, much less put thought into practice.
Four years with her home gone and even a complete stranger still saw her as a delicate little princess.
“No need to look so surprised,” she managed to say with enough of an edge that Cliegg’s eyebrows shot up. “I wasn’t planning on being here earlier today, but now I am and that’s just how it is. I can handle it.”
That earned her a snort. “Says the girl who landed in the middle of a sandstorm,” he shot back. “Where’s your ship?”
And of course he had to start with that awkward question. “I los— I exchanged it. To get here.”
Technically true. Completely false.
“I don’t care what pile of scrap you were piloting,” Cliegg was, if possible, even more dismissive now, “if you traded it to stay here, you were cheated. And you deserve it.”
Leia managed not to mutter a bitter agreement and forced herself to keep his gaze until he was the one that looked away. But it was a dirty trick. He wasn’t wrong. Not about anything important.
“Why don’t we have lunch?” Shmi intervened gently, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “I think everyone will feel better after we’ve eaten.”
There was a grunt of reluctant assent from her husband and Shmi used it as an excuse to immediately shoo Leia to the kitchen to help with the meal. Since at this point that mostly meant helping to carry the dishes that a girl introduced as Beru seemed to have been preparing (that was Luke’s aunt, wasn’t it, why hadn’t he talked about this place more?) Leia was able to be unembarrassed and helpful.
Who knew how long that would last.
Oh, this really is hell.
It was a brief thought that flared for a bright and sharp moment, hot and dry as the surrounding landscape, as the protocol droid in front of her turned and with an all too familiar stunted gesture in an all too familiar helpful tone announced, “Hello, I am C-3PO, human cyborg relations. And who might you be?”
“Leia,” she managed with what she felt was remarkable clarity as she stared at the grey metal coverings so unlike the gold she remembered and tried to reconcile the two images. “I’m Leia.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mistress Leia. I hope I may be of service during your stay here. I—“
“Thank you,” she cut him off with what she hoped was not too forced of a smile. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
“Of course! Only say the word and I...“
It was a relief to hear Shmi chuckle next to Leia, and made the younger woman relax as the all too familiar droid took several more seconds to pledge his service.
“He’s a bit… excitable,” Shmi admitted when they finally moved away from the vaporators and back towards the house (and it turned out this pile of rocks and machinery really was a farm, of sorts). “But I can’t help but love him in spite of it. Anakin begged me to keep him when he left.”
Heart stuttering slightly, Leia hesitantly asked, “Anakin?”
“My son,” Shmi answered quickly, her eyes gazing determinedly out across the desert. “The one who was ta—who left. With the Jedi. I expect he is still training with them, since they didn’t bring him back.”
The forced humor in her tone resonated with a tight feeling that prickled over Leia’s skin and she hoped (if only Luke had ever properly explained) that it was a Force driven sense of what Shmi was clearly feeling. Grief and loss. Maybe even regret?
It resonated even more as Leia thought about it, so that was probably right. If there were any feelings Leia would be able to pick up on right now, those would be it.
“Are you sorry?” The words had escaped before she could think them through, and Leia winced a bit as Shmi’s gaze snapped back to her guest.
There was a moment of hesitation before she answered. “I don’t regret freeing him. He deserved to be free. Everyone does. I couldn’t make him stay here either. Not after having been raised a slave. He would have tried to stay with me, tried to work for Watto to make him let me go. And that wouldn’t have worked. No better than before at least. He is—was such a sweet child. Always wanting to help everyone. I couldn’t hold him back. Not here. Not like this.”
It was difficult, impossible even for Leia to imagine what Shmi was saying. The only image in her head of Anakin Skywalker was a grown man, firm in his position in the Empire. Commander, tormentor, Sith.
How had he gone from being the sweet boy that Shmi remembered to being… that?
“It must be hard,” Leia said at last, tripping a little over the words. They were so inadequate.
Shmi sighed. “We do anything for the people that we love. No matter what it costs us. It’s the joy and pain of being a parent.”
“I owe you. Possibly more than anyone else. Will you let me do this?”
With a shudder Leia dragged herself back to the present, away from that ghostly place in her mind, cold blues and blacks, the saddest eyes (but she would never, ever forgive him), words that echoed pain across the empty silence in her heart (she couldn’t feel Luke’s heartbeat, not anymore). Grinding her steps into the sandy ground, Leia let the irritation and pain of each movement grate through her mind in place of the memories that wanted to linger there.
“Is it worth it?” She hadn’t meant to ask that question either, but something in Shmi’s face told Leia the woman had not been asked this question often enough.
“I hope so,” was the whispered response. “I hope it was worth it.”
Descending the stone steps back into the house, Leia turned that thought over and over in her mind, lingering on it.
There was a pressure to it. Not quite like the tight prickling of grief, but with the same ethereal tone it swirled about in Leia’s mind. Ephemeral and delicate, as if it could change from one heartbeat to the next.
Hope.
The thought lingered as Leia helped with dishes and then allowed Beru to guide her through some basic attempts at helping with the cooking. It danced around, back and forth as Owen and Cliegg returned and the family sat down to dinner. It swelled as Leia found herself staring at C-3PO later that evening while helping the family shut down the homestead for the night. It burned as she changed into the clothes she had borrowed, letting her hair out and combing through the strands more meditatively than productively. The thought twisted and writhed as she tried to connect Shmi’s longing to the masked face of Darth Vader and failed time and again to feel anything beyond the pain of the past.
“Why did you send me here?” she asked the darkness in hushed tones, knowing there would be no answer. That there couldn’t be, not anymore.
That had been the price.
“Do whatever is necessary.”
Could she? Leia didn’t even know what was necessary. Had virtually no training to reach into the Force and try and figure it out. She had only her gut instincts. And longing. Longing so deep and painful it almost stole her breath as she allowed it to come forward and gave it the attention she had been denying it all day.
It didn’t hurt as much now, she noticed. Now that she had cried some of it out.
She had a feeling though, that it would be back. In force.
Something clicked then, a dangerous thought.
What would Shmi give, to have a second chance?
The pressure around her swelled and for a split second Leia knew, knew that if she offered Shmi the chance to see Anakin again Shmi would take it. No questions asked. Knew it as well as she had known the feeling of her brother’s life, shining near or far in the galaxy. As well as she knew her own name.
“I can’t,” she said out loud, thinking of Cliegg and Owen and Beru. Of responsibilities here and now. Of a lack of ship, or destination. Leia didn’t even know where Anakin Skywalker was right now. Or what year it was. Or anything.
“Do whatever is necessary.”
Luke had told her she was brave. Braver than he was (as brave as Shmi was?).
She hoped that was true.
“And don’t look back.”