Chapter Text
The smell of the air tickled Leia's nose.
She sat up in bed. Light was trickling through the windows, bit by bit, as the sun crawled over the mountains. Birds were arguing outside, Mommy said birds tweeting was almost always birds arguing. But it did sound pretty.
Luke stayed asleep, even though Leia had pulled most of the covers with her when she sat up.
She clenched the blankets a little closer to her chest, and sniffed the air.
It smelled like dirt. Not the clean, fresh, almost tasty smell of the earth, but of the dirty kind of dirt. The kind that piled up in corners and gathered all kinds of hideous things. It smelled like the metal of Daddy's machine shop. And it smelled like pollution. So strong she could almost taste it.
All the while, the force shivered around Leia. Whispering, warning. Change. It murmured into her ear and deep in her soul. Change.
Leia didn't like it at all.
Luke groaned, and rolled over. He shouted his annoyance into her mind. She winced, and the feeling, and the smell, vanished. Luke was too tired to hold himself back in the force. He wasn’t supposed to be in her bed, he had his own room. But sometimes she missed sharing a room with him, even if she never said it. But Luke could tell, and he missed it too, so sometimes he came in with her.
For a moment, Leia wasn't sure if she'd dreamed the feeling or not. It had been only a second, perhaps it had been a memory?
Carefully she crept out of bed, sliding so no more cold air would slide in to Luke.
She dressed quickly. She tossed her nightgown in a bed, and pulled on her uniform. Leia thought it made her look very grown up. It had pants that buttoned with a painted wooden button, and a suit jacket that hooked over her chest. She tugged on her stockings, and buttoned the shoes over them. She brushed her hair with a carved wooden comb Grandpa had made for her, and braided it quickly. She tied it off with a ribbon that matched her uniform.
All the while the sun crawled up and up, spilling it’s light through the windows. The windows Daddy had designed just for her, so it would be easy for her to crawl onto the windowsill and watch the outside.
Luke didn’t understand. Leia loved Luke, she really did. But he was like an unstable sun, radiating and blasting and shining his emotions to everyone and everything. He liked running and flying and fixing things. He hadn’t even learned his letters until he was four because he wouldn’t sit still. He couldn’t feel the force like Leia did.
It was nice, but sometimes Leia got tired of it, and then she sat in the window and closed herself off from everyone and everything. She liked watching the outside.
Two years ago, when Leia had been even smaller, they had lived in Varykino, where Mama had loved to go when she was queen. Her family had maintained the estate for generations for the royalty and rich of Naboo. There, the windowsills had been high. So high that neither Luke nor Leia could climb into them without help. Daddy had promised them the house he was building for them would be finished soon, and then they would be able to climb on it all they wanted.
Leia remembered she hadn’t believed him, for a while. Every morning she would get up and she would remember there was a whole entire day before Daddy would come home to tell them how the house was going. She would think about it while eating breakfast, and while she handed Mama a diaper to change baby Shmi. She tried not to think about it during school, because she was supposed to be doing her work, but sometimes the thought snuck into her head while Mama was busy helping. Daddy was coming home tonight, and he would have more news on the house. And then there was lunch, and Leia would think about it while she ate her sandwich. She would think about it while she helped Mama weed the garden for fifteen minutes.
She would forget while she went swimming in the lake. Luke was too much fun to play with, while they laughed and splashed each other. But she would remember when Mama dried them off with a towel, and she remembered while she sat in her room in between reading pages of her books.
Sometimes she thought about it so hard she never read at all. Maybe, she hoped, because each and every day seemed so very long, Daddy had had enough time to finish the house entirely and they would move in tonight and Leia would wake up the next morning in her very own room that Daddy built just for her.
They had planned the room together. White walls with blue lines painted on and pretty carved wood over the doorways and windows. Windows low enough they were easy for Leia to climb in. And a big desk of her very own where she could work on her schoolwork. There was going to be a pretty shelf built into the wall with flowers and fruits carved along the edges. There would be a special building close by with a lot of teachers, and Leia would be allowed to walk there by herself and go to school with other children than Luke, and be allowed to study whatever she liked. It was a very good school, Mommy promised. It was why Daddy was building the house there.
She would wait, anxiously, until finally she felt Daddy poking her in the force and she would run screaming out the door and asking and asking if the house was done yet.
But there would only be the electrical work done, or Grandpa had plastered another room, or maybe the plumber had come. And he would show her a picture and the house still looked very much like a skinny ugly skeleton with wood for bones. Not ready for anyone to live in at all.
After that there was supper, and she would go to bed, disappointed. And then she would wake up and it would be the same day all over again.
But one morning, she had woken up, and she had smelled fresh paint and newly cut wood and barely dried plaster. And the force had whispered it then, too. Change.
So Leia had known, somehow, that she would not have to wait until she was as old and crippled as the day for her father to come home. And sure enough, he stayed for breakfast, and the house was finally done!
Moving in had also taken a long time, but it had been very exciting. Everything had been put into boxes and loaded into a huge speeder with a roof. Luke and Leia liked to climb through the boxes and sit on top of them to touch the ceiling, giggling as they looked down on the world. Aunt Sola and Uncle Darred and Uncle Ono had come with Ryoo and Pooja. They had all played together while the adults packed everything up.
But just the day after that, she did wake up in her new room, and even though there were boxes everywhere Leia had decided it was the happiest day of her life.
She had been happy then. Happy to be closer to Grandpa and Grandma. Happy to have so many other children, just the same age as her to play with. Happy to have Pooja close by to help explain her homework. Happy for Ahsoka to have her own room when she stayed with them. And most excited for those windowsills, because Leia liked nothing more than to sit at the windows and watch the nature outside be still, and to feel still herself.
She liked that. And she liked her life how it was. And yet the force had whispered in her ear again. Change.
She ran out into the garden, smelling the fresh tasty earth. She jogged past the vegetables and the spices and even some grains Daddy was trying to grow. She stopped in front of the star berry plants.
They dotted the ground, vines thrusting into the air like a fountain of water, arching over into the ground again, where new plants would grow.
The berries of the star berry plants did not look like stars. But the leaves did. They grew in five pointed shapes, and they closed and opened when the sun left and came. They were just opening now.
Quickly, careful not to soil her uniform, Leia knelt and pushed the leaves aside, picking the pink red berries just how Grandma had taught her. Snapping each vine cleanly so it would encourage the plants to grow.
When she had collected as much as she could hold, she stood up and ran along the garden pathway back to the house. Instead of going back into their bedroom, she turned along the side, feet thumbing against the worn dirt path. She stopped at the door to the garage, and stared at it. She looked down at the berries in her hands and back up the door. Finally, she relented, and nudged it, just a little, in the force. It opened, and she stepped inside and wiped her shoes on the mat.
Daddy did things like that all the time, but Ahsoka didn’t like to. She preferred to listen to the force, rather than make it do menial things for them. Leia liked that too, but her hands were full of berries, and she didn’t want to drop any while she used one hand to open the door.
Daddy was working. His tools click, clicked quietly while he worked. The garage had two levels, the lower levels where Daddy kept his big projects, and the upper levels, where everything interesting happened.
Leia walked to the stairs, and then turned a little to walk up them one at a time. She dropped one berry, but she kept going. The berry was dirty anyways. Daddy’s floors were always oily.
She spotted Daddy at his work desk, clicking away at the arm of a K-M12 assistive droid’s arm. Leia walked up to him, and pushed herself up on the tips of her toes to see him work.
He paused, and turned to look at her.
" Hello Daddy." Leia chirped in Daddy's language.
He stopped, and he smiled down at her. “ Good morning, sweetwater. ”
Then he picked her up, and set her into his lap. She promptly dropped the berries into her lap and started eating them while she watched him work.
She thought about telling him about the feeling. The almost not quite a dream, but she decided it could wait until after school. After all, Mommy and Daddy would have told her if something was going to change soon.
When Daddy finished his work on the arm, Leia picked up the leftover green leaves in her lap and tossed them over the shining gray arm.
“There.” She said, confidently. “Now it’s beautiful.”
Daddy laughed. His happiness curled around Leia and hugged her like a warm quilt from Aunt Sola.
He kissed the top of her head. “Sure is.” Then he picked her up, because he liked doing it, and Leia liked wrapping her arms around his neck and pretending she was still four and needed his help to sit on the window seat.
He walked across the gray, stained garage floor and into the kitchen pantry, where he took off his oily boots and left them by the door.
Mommy was in the kitchen, staring at a simmering pot with a confused face. She was already dressed up. It was a pretty purple dress today, and it floated around Mommy like she held it up with the force, even though she wasn’t very good at the force. It also made Mommy’s stomach, or her Big-Belly-Full-of-Baby, as she liked to call it, seem even bigger.
Daddy took the spoon from her slack hand and dipped it into the pot, bringing out a sample to taste. His face scrunched up.
“I don’t understand.” Mommy said. “I measured all the spices that you put in last time, and it’s not right.”
“That was last season, my love.” He said. He dropped the spoon on the counter and picked up the spices Mommy had set aside while she'd used them. “They were stronger last season.”
Mommy huffed. “It can’t just be all logical and measured like baking, can’t it?”
Daddy set Leia on the floor and kissed first Mama and then her big stomach. Then he started working at the soup in earnest. Cupboards bounced open of their own will, and spices danced out, and deposited some of themselves into the stew.
Mommy was cutting up some Shurra fruit now, and putting some in her own lunch, and some in Luke’s, and some in Leia’s.
Leia climbed on the counter and handed Daddy the spices as he said he needed them. He kissed her on the top of her head and called her sweetwater again. She beamed.
Suddenly Daddy handed her the spoon. “Don’t stop stirring the pot.” He ordered and ran out of the room.
Leia frowned while she stirred. She had felt it too. Shmi was a lot older now, but she still got scared when she woke up alone in her room. She technically didn’t have to move out until the new baby was born, but Mommy and Daddy said she needed the practice. She did all right during the night, but sometimes in the morning she forgot the world still existed and she wasn’t alone in the galaxy, so she pushed out her panic into the force and cried.
Luke wandered into the kitchen, frowning. He was still in his nightgown, and he’d pulled it up because Grandma had overestimated how tall he was, and Daddy hadn’t found the time to hem it. “Shmi woke me up.” He complained.
“Shmi’s little.” Leia told him, scraping the bottom of the pot so it wouldn’t burn there. “You can’t be mad at her.”
“I’m not.” Luke said, and he rubbed his eyes. “I’m just telling the truth.”
Mama stopped packing their lunches to hug Luke. “I’m sorry sweetie, but I would have woken you up soon anyways. Don’t worry, she’ll learn. It’s only been a few weeks.”
Luke nodded and wobbled over to the table and climbed up on the bench. He grabbed a fruit from the middle of the table and started crunching away.
Shmi was almost done crying when Daddy brought her into the kitchen. He was running his not metal hand through her golden curly hair while she clung to his neck. Leia wished her hair was curly like hers sometimes, but you couldn’t really be jealous of a baby.
Mama ran to her too, kissing her cheek and whispering good morning in Mama’s language. Then she poked Shmi’s stomach until she laughed and remembered everything was alright.
She saw the soup Leia was cooking and smiled wide, her little teeth sparkling in the morning sun. “Nummy!” She said, pointing. “Weia make nummy!”
Mommy laughed, even though Leia didn’t see what was funny about it, and she smiled at Shmi. “Yes, Leia’s making a yummy soup. Do you want some?”
“Yes.”
So Leia spooned some soup into a bowl for Shmi, and then for Mommy and Daddy and Luke and finally herself.
They sat at the kitchen table together. Most of the time, they had to use spoons when they ate their soup, but when it was Daddy’s nummy soup they were allowed to pick up the bowl and drink it like milk or water. It tasted much better that way, Daddy said.
Then Mommy had to go to work. Rex came in the speeder to pick her up, and she kissed them all before picking up her bag and going away. Then Daddy helped Luke get dressed and he hugged them both before they started walking to school.
Luke ran ahead when he saw one of his friends, so Leia walked to school alone, under the green trees and over the stone streets.
Then, when everything was quite again, Leia remembered what the force had said, and half of her wanted to grab Luke and run home and soak up how wonderful everything was while she still had the chance. But she made herself keep walking.
Perhaps change would come, she reasoned, but Daddy or Mommy would have told her it was soon. And she had dance today, and her teacher was moving her up in reading levels, so her schoolwork would be interesting again. And even though a day wasn’t quite as long as it used to be, it was still a long time, and she needn’t spend it worrying about change when it was still so very far away.