Work Text:
Palatine kept paper files.
Because of course he did seethed Leia as she picked up the small stack of paper that had been taunting her for several hours.
She dropped the stack back down on her desk, fighting the temptation to burn the pile and be done with it. But they had to be reviewed. Just in case they missed something important. Everyone knew you didn’t keep paper records unless you were trying to hide something you didn’t trust to encryption.
This wasn’t supposed to be part of her job. But the person whose job it was brought them to her, silently handing off the stack tied together with string and a small label.
Skywalker
“Your brother,” the archivist answered when she shot them a questioning glance.
“I didn’t want to pry,” they clarified, I don’t want to know she heard. There were rumors about the rebellion’s hero that gave people pause. There were lots who had questions, but many simply didn’t want to know. Information was dangerous, and what if the son proved to be anything like his sire?
The situation was partially her fault – she had reminded her staff to come to her with anything important. Or Luke. They would have gone to Luke. But he was always away now - trying to be a Jedi instead of a politician. He left her alone to figure this out.
She wished for the millionth time he was here. He would have taken this on for her. He would have cherished looking through the faded papers with dates on them that made it abundantly clear they weren’t about Luke.
She slammed the papers against the desk, angry. Angry at Luke for not being here. Angry at Han for being curious about what she brought home, for wondering why she didn’t just comm Luke and let him deal with it next time he was around.
As much as she wanted to pawn this off on Luke, another part of herself didn’t want to hurt him with whatever this file contained. She didn’t want him to find out that Skywalker the hero never existed, that there had only ever been a horribly flawed human being and then the monster. The fairy tale that helped Luke sleep at night and motivated him to be a good Jedi existed nowhere other than in his mind.
She picked up the stack again, planning to whack it against her desk when a smell rectangle fell out. She paused in her movements to pick up the loose paper, wondering what it was.
It looked like a frozen holograph… only not quite. The older, more primitive version…. a paper photograph.
It only took a moment after realizing what it was for her eyes to widen.
She recognized the woman in the photo.
She was sure she had never met her, or even seen a holograph or a painting. But somehow, she knew her face.
The shape of her nose and her brow, the cheekbones, her coloring. They were all intimately familiar.
I know her
She moved from her office into the fresher and held the photo next to her own face. She gazed into the mirror and studied the similarities as she read Shmi Skywalker written in faded ink on the back of the photo.
No one looked like Leia. Even Luke, who was her sibling and felt like family, didn't look like it.
But this woman, this woman had her face.
Or rather she had pieces of hers.
And suddenly she needed to know everything she could about this woman. This woman who was highly praised by a grandson who only knew her through stories from her stepson. This beautiful loving woman who somehow ended up birthing a monster and dying tragically young.
She needed to know more.
She opened the files and started reading, trepidation still swirling around her but not stopping her as she read through the night.
Bleary eyed in the morning she thought about how she wanted to kill Vader after he tortured Han. She wondered what would happen if Luke, and Han and her unborn child were taken away from her now? After she already lost so much. She wondered if she took after her grandmother in looks and her father in temperament, did she have his darkness lurking inside her?
Han took the papers from her, frowning before he read them himself. He told her sometime later that even if she was anything like Vader, which she wasn't, Anakin hadn't been all bad. Not before that sick bastard got to him and twisted him.
“Listen Leia, you’ve got me, and Luke and soon we’ll have our own family. We're not going anywhere. And you don't have some Sith Lord out there actively trying to destroy you for over a decade. You won't ever end up like Anakin.”
She smiled at him and pushed her fears out of her mind as best she could. After all, she was foremost Leia Organa and she had a galaxy to fix.
Only years later would she realize she should have worried about ending up like Shmi.