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After the battle of Endor, Leia found her brother in the medwing, looking exhausted, his eyes bleary with exhaustion and the drugs that he had been given. He was pale, a terrible Lichtenburg figure spreading out across his skin, but he looked happy.
Because, lying beside him, was Darth Vader.
The man from her nightmares, the man who had tortured her, injured Luke, and nearly taken Han away forever.
He was lying still, only the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and the steady beeping of medical equipment to tell her that he even lived.
She felt tension rise as she approached the pair of them. Vader, their father, lying deathlike and still, Luke wrapped in a blanket, hooked up to monitors of his own, but stubbornly sitting at Vader’s bedside nonetheless.
She felt her own shoulder throb, and reached up to rub at it absently. The bacta had done quick work, as it was meant to, but her body still knew the time it should have taken to heal, and demanded she rest.
“Luke.”
He looked up, eyes only partially registering her existence, and gave her a little smile.
“I did it.”
“Yeah,” she sighed uncertainly, pulling over another chair, and seating herself. “So… this is our father.”
“Yeah,” Luke said, squeezing a still, metal hand again.
“Do they expect him to survive?” Leia asked dubiously. The man already looked like a corpse, she didn’t think she could even see the eye motion that the state of sleep the machines indicated would produce.
“They’re feeling optimistic that he’ll wake up,” Luke said, his thumb still traversing Vader’s claw, as if he could offer any comfort to the unconscious cyborg. “I’m hoping he will.”
She smiled, leaning her cheek to her brother’s shoulder, feeling safe in his presence.
The idea that they were family, while not entirely alien, brought with it a new reassurance. She was not alone. Her family were not all gone with Alderaan, because her brother was here to lean against. Even the presence of Vader was somehow comforting. Perhaps because of her brother’s joy at his retrieval, perhaps because of something in herself, perhaps the Force itself coiling in her stomach and telling her of their relation.
“Where’s Han?” Luke asked, freeing one of his hands, and putting his arm around her shoulders, resting his cheek against her head.
“He stayed for more of the party. Told me to go get medical attention.”
“Probably good advice,” Luke murmured.
“Are you supposed to be up? You look awful.”
He laughed. “Thanks, Leia. I’m…. probably not, but I didn’t want Father to wake up alone.”
She looked down at Vader again, at the unfamiliar face of a man who had haunted her dreams.
“He looks even worse than you do.”
She was trying to joke, to make light of it all, but it didn’t quite work.
This was Luke’s beloved father. The man he vocally adored, and missed, despite never having known him.
“He’s alive, though,” Luke said, with a soft reverence. “I never thought I’d get that.”
“He chose to come back with you?” Leia asked. Surely, he must have. Because even Luke, sweet, foolish Luke, would not have allowed Vader to be laid unguarded in an Alliance medbay.
“He saved me, Leia.”
Luke was smiling, that wide-eyed, joyous smile he had worn so much more, when he had first joined the Alliance. Before war had aged them both beyond their years, when he had still been petty about following commands, easily distracted and so full of life and enthusiasm.
“You’re getting everything you wanted, aren’t you,” she teased gently.
“Yeah,” Luke agreed, and Leia watched him caress Vader’s palm again. After a pause, he let out a soft laugh, “Can you believe it? Orphan farm boy finds out he has a family and a destiny.”
“Pretty crazy,” she agreed. “Where do we go from here?”
Luke sighed, squeezing her tighter again. “Yoda wanted me to train a new generation of Jedi. I don’t know if I’m ready for it.”
“Do you think he would help?” she asked uncertainly, tipping her hand to the still form on the bed. “He would have trained with the old Jedi.”
“Would you really be comfortable with that?” Luke asked, surprised. “I mean, I’m not sure he’d even want to, but… he’s Vader. Even if he’s on our side now, that won’t have… it won’t have changed, exactly.”
“What else are we gonna do with him?” she asked, looking up into her brother’s face. Their conversation seemed to have grounded him somewhat, his eyes focusing better than they had before.
“I don’t know,” he said, before flashing that smile again, “Can’t we just keep him around for a while?”
“Alright, but you have to -,”
“Luke?”
The voice from the stranger was almost as dead as the pallor of his skin, but Luke did not hesitate to turn his smile to him.
“Father!”
Leia gripped her brother’s pant leg, and forced herself to turn to see their father.
Outside of anything she might have imagined from him, he was smiling back at Luke, though his eyelids drooped, and the action seeped to cause him a great deal of pain.
“And…” his eyes slowly focused on her, and he reached out for her. “Leia?”
She swallowed, recognizing that in his current state, he could not have realized yet who they were to one another.
What he had done to her.
And, cautiously, she reached out, touching his hand, feeling the gentle stillness of the sharp claws, before curling her hand delicately around his.
“Yes, Father.”
The words felt strange, wrong, like she was disrespecting the man who had raised her, and she questioned whether she would use them again.
“Thank the Force,” Vader sighed, drawing her hand to his face, as if to kiss it. “Are you injured?”
She caught Luke with a glance before shaking her head. She didn’t want to discuss her injury with Vader. She wasn’t sure she could weather his relief to see her alive, she didn’t want to hazard his concern.
He smiled, releasing her, melting back into the cot. For a long moment, he closed his eyes again, and seemed to be thinking hard.
“Your… friends… were there…” he trailed off, took another long moment of thought. “Many losses?”
Luke looked at her, and she realized with a turn in her stomach that he didn’t know yet.
“None we knew too well,” she answered quietly. There had still been losses. Too many losses, too many people they distantlyknew, but she prayed that they were the last in a grim parade.
Luke sensed what she was thinking, she knew. She felt his gentle touch with the Force, the way he folded his corporeal hand around hers. The look on their father’s face hissed a vow that he knew, too.
“When I… am able,” Vader said slowly, “I will see to it… that your friends are made safe.”
Leia hated even the idea of that.
“No promises yet,” Luke deflected, squeezing her hand again to silence her. “Maybe we’ll come back to that, when you can keep your eyes open for a full sentence.”
Vader chuckled, his eyes still shut, form slack.
“Very diplomatic, you are your mother’s son.”
“Leia was going to tell me about Mother,” Luke said lightly, scooting his chair closer to Vader, somehow managing not to dislodge Leia in the process.
Leia tensed, gripping him in place. She didn’t want Vader to speak about their mother, she didn’t want to share the kind stranger with a Sith, a man she suspected had killed her mother.
But Vader only gave a miniscule nod. “That seems wise,” he agreed. “You could ask… Mothma, as well…”
Leia felt as if she were possessed by something else, unable to see herself ask the question. “What was her name?”
Because she wantedto tell Luke about their mother. But all she knew of her was her sad smile, and her adoptive father’s whispers that she had been incredible, and brave, but that Leia could not know her identity. Because somehow, it would be more dangerous than being the daughter of a Rebel leader.
She felt her father’s pain, Luke nearly doubled over, looking as if he had been punched in the gut.
“Padmé,” he whispered, and Leia felt his thoughts like racing water. “Amidala… or… no…” He swallowed, and Leia saw tears (they could not have been so real, so clear) run down his cheek. “Naberrie.”
“You don’t know her name,” Leia hissed, fighting the image, seared in her brain, of such real remorse.
“I am sorry,” Vader whispered, and Leia tensed, clutching her brother to her side as a heartbeat monitor started to wail a warning. “We… did not have the time together… she…”
“Father, it’s alright, you need to be quiet -,” Luke said, trying to pull away from Leia to offer his reassurance to Vader.
“She used a pseudonym. It was… she was… On Naboo, royalty customarily…”
“Father, please,” Luke said, and he finally pulled away, stepping to Vader’s side, ignoring that his own entourage of medical equipment was jostling after him. Leia watched in fury and… through her own tears, she realized miserably, as Luke wiped Vader’s. The Sith’s prostheses twitched weakly on the sheets as he attempted to do it himself.
“Naboo,” Leia snarled, even as she knew she should withdraw, let Vader recover. “One of the Emperor’s lackeys?”
“No!” Vader cried again, his pain ringing through the Force, nearly enough to shut her up.
“When will we have to face her,” she demanded, her fists clenching, fingernails digging deep into her palm. “How much will shetake from us?”
She couldn’t rectify the kind woman with being the sort of monster that Vader was, but neither could she imagine her lovingVader.
“No, she’s dead!” Vader cried, clutching Luke’s hand as the Jedi tried to still him. “She would have never hurt you! I failed her, I failed the galaxy, I failed you…”
Another alarm was ringing, and Leia swept to her feet, furious, hot tears running down her face.
She hadn’t wanted this; she had only wanted to see her brother…
She was nearly knocked off her feet by the arrival of a meddroid, which fussed with Vader and his machines.
Luke turned to her, and she suddenly saw the tears on his face, and her stomach churned. She had thought she was sensing Vader’s pain, but of course Luke, too, would be hurt by her words…
“You need to leave,” he said, his voice wavering. “Go find Han, I can’t… I can’t do this right now, alright?”
“Luke…” her throat felt constricted, and she nearly cast an accusing look at the sobbing form on the bed.
He shook his head. “No. I know… I know you’re hurting too, but he and I… our feelings are a physical dangerto us right now. You. Need. To leave.”
She opened her mouth to apologize, or defend herself, but quickly closed it instead, giving him a quick nod. She hoped he would understand the implied apology. Then she ducked her head, and quickly turned away, the sounds of a broken man crying, and her brother’s unsteady voice trying to comfort him following her out into the hall.
The walk to her quarters was terribly long, but it gave her time to wipe the tears from her face, and pull together a reasonable facsimile of the leader she tried to be, before she encountered more than hospital attendants.
She felt she should look into the name Vader had given her, to try to have something to share with Luke, and to assuage her own fears that her mother, too, might have wished her harm, but by the time she got her door’s stubborn lock open, all she had the strength to do was sink onto her bed and cry.
Han found her some time later. Whispered something about Luke having sent him, and sank down next to her, holding her close. He smelled of the forest, and the bonfires, and the explosives they had laid, and she clung to him, and cried some more.