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Obi-Wan tells him to bury his feelings, but Luke doesn’t want to. If they ‘do him credit,’ he shouldn’t have to.
For the first time, the elaborate web of lies Obi-Wan, Yoda, and his aunt and uncle built for him yields something good. Something not unimaginably painful. (Do not become your father; you are the only one who can avenge your father; kill your father to save us all; do not become your father.)
Leia is his sister; the knots and confusion untangle into a simple truth before Obi-Wan finishes speaking. Luke and Leia pull together through the Force (his best understanding of it), just as it keeps the remaining slivers of Anakin Skywalker from surrendering him to the Emperor.
Doubtless the pair would have met somewhere in the galaxy without Obi-Wan, but he had something to do with it.
And he might be answering questions today.
“You hid us separately?” Luke does not allow his tone to become accusatory; only a detached curiosity.
The ghost sighs, wavering; no longer absolved of his multitude of actions in life.
“Your mother fought me for weeks, but conceded in the end: both you and your sister were to play different parts.”
Conscience twinges. His mother should have been the first question.
Obi-Wan sounds older than Luke’s ever heard him, “We did what we thought was best.”
The old truths about his – no, their mother fall away. (He tries to remember what Leia said about her adoption.)
Certain point of view, indeed. He chooses to believe Obi-Wan strikes closer to honesty than he has in the past.
Obi-Wan’s tone invites no more questions, though Luke has hundreds more.
He rises to leave, for nothing will change the dead’s wishes and it is not worth the arguments.
Luke is ready to give everything to save his father, but he is not alone anymore. It gives him pause. He rolls the thought over and over in his head, like the smooth stones Yoda had him levitate.
He never was alone.
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When Leia is sure Han is finally asleep, she slips back outside. The rain has stopped and the village is quiet. She wraps her arms tightly around herself against the night chill.
Luke is still on the moon, of that much she is certain. She makes no effort to reach out sense others.
Only hope – Luke knows better than to pin everything on an individual. Once again, it all falls to her. She took her father’s burdens; now she is charged with her brother’s, should it all go horribly wrong.
She can only hope Luke’s resolution is enough. His understanding of the Force is stronger than hers. He cannot flinch in facing the Emperor, just as she cannot flinch in ordering the Alliance army.
Mercenary as it is (Han should be proud), she would keep Luke if it meant whatever remains of Anakin Skywalker is lost to them for good.
Anakin Skywalker. Her eyes prick with tears remembering how rapturously Luke spoke of him. How she laughed, not unkindly, at his idolatry. She understood his pain wrong; his world was torn to shreds when he confronted Vader, as hers is in tatters now. Their scars are the same.
She wants to be angry at Luke for leaving, but she would do the same in his place. If it was Bail Organa held by the Emperor, she would stop at nothing to get him back.
(But Bail Organa did not condemn millions to die.)
Luke asked about their mother and it is another wrench. Leia pushes into the recesses of her memory for the woman she knew as her birth mother.
More floods back and Leia begins to cry in earnest. The sad, lonely woman who thought of nothing but the Alliance because she had nothing left.
It is not a happy story, but when Luke comes back, she will remember what she can.
When the tears subside, she brushes the dried tracks and rises to return to bed.
Han breathing is slow and steady when she crawls under the blanket beside him. It calms and lulls her, but she does not sleep. Elsewhere, Luke does not sleep either.
“Hurry and save our father,” she projects. “I cannot give you secure time for long, and I won’t lose you now.”
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On the return journey to the Alliance base, Luke finds Leia in the pilot’s seat of the Falcon. He joins her in looking out beyond the cockpit.
The steady hum of the ship and the silence of space are comforting.
“I’m glad you didn’t kill him.”
Leia’s comment breaks Luke from his trance. She still is angry and hurt at what their father became, as he was a year ago. It’s a step forward.
“He was never going to kill me. Master Yoda and Obi-Wan wanted me to do what they saw as the only way to stop him. I saw differently.”
“They shouldn’t have sent you to do their dirty work.”
He glances sideways at her. She still looks outwards but frowns slightly. He smiles in spite of it. She takes ‘protective sister’ to heart.
“It wasn’t just them. Our mother agreed to it too.”
Leia spins the pilot’s seat around to face him. “Are you sure about that?” There is a tired edge in her voice.
“About as sure as I am of anything with our family.” It means almost nothing, but they rebuild.
Leia spins the seat forward again, not looking at him.
“She wasn’t like that. Hard and vengeful, I mean. There was a time I’d wandered away from my nanny and I found her alone. She reminded me of my father – the irony, I know. But when she saw me, it was like it all fell away. She picked me up and brought me back to my parents. I’ve tried for the past few days now, but her face, her voice – they’re only a warm haze.”
It is almost like she speaks to herself, though the effort is all for him. The mother he never needed comes back, limited by Leia’s childhood understanding and early workings of the Force.
She continues, “And then she was gone. Left and died. When my father told me who she was, I wondered why she wanted me and then didn’t.”
Facing him again, “She must have wanted you, Luke.”
It hurts more than he expects. Circumstance gave her to Leia, not him and although it has barely been a week, he thought he’d come to terms with it.
Quietly, “You’re probably right.” Then, “Are you sure you don’t know anything else?”
“Other than her name, although I’m beginning to doubt that was really it. My father said he didn’t know who my birth father was, but that can’t have been true. He kept me as far away from Vader and the Emperor as he could.”
He sighs, “It’s all lies –”
“Don’t. Don’t take away what the Organas gave me; what our aunt and uncle gave you. What our mother wanted to give us.” Hesitantly, “What our father gave us.”
Her cutting him short startles him, but her understanding refocuses him. She’s known the truth for a fraction of the time he has and already makes more sense of it than he does. In the four years he’s come to know her, he expects nothing less.
Dryly, “Obi-Wan and our mother should have switched our places. You would have saved our father much faster.”
(He considers the alternative; he aches for Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen.)
“From what you’ve said about the Jedi masters, I probably would have driven them up a wall more than you did.”
They chuckle and fall back into the comfortable silence.
And now they must both be the Jedi and the Republic.