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Leia’s first memory is all images, fractured by the light through the trees that are tall enough to reach the sky, Luke smiling across the collection of items Mama and Obi let them hold onto. Mama is making food, Obi is in the tent, and Leia feels something poking at her. She thinks it’s Mama – it feels like Mama – but Mama’s all the way over there, and there’s a feeling (sensation, her mind provides) in this, pushing at her.
Mama’s happy, but under that worried, and sad, so sad deep, deep inside. Leia won’t understand that sort of sadness until she’s staring at Han, sure he’s about to die to protect her, and he apologizes to her for loving her. For letting her love him.
When she’s five, they live on another planet, one whose plains and skies are so wide that Leia and Luke sometimes lay out under the stars for hours. They make up constellations, sometimes. Luke found a set of stars that he drew a Tauntaun around, even though they’ve never seen them in real life. Leia found one that looked like a girl poking at the air, and they can’t agree on whether she’s poking at someone or poking just because, like Mama does. It’s a nice planet. It’s peaceful.
Just like always, though, the peace ends.
Obi-Wan is packing things up so fast, and Mama has a blaster on her hip, and Luke and Leia are packing things up too – but then Leia feels it and stops – they’re too late, no, the bad guys are coming for them. She can feel the three Stormtroopers, all of them with blasters, all of them coming for her and Luke. Because someone saw Luke hunting with his pebbles, one of them is thinking, and they’re going to kill Luke.
This isn’t fair.
Mama looks up, the door opens, and Leia thinks, desperately, you can’t see us you can’t see us you can’t see us we’re already gone we’re gone we’re gone we’re gone, because if something can push her and show her something, she’s going to push back, she always does.
“Search the back room. They might be hiding.”
It’s working. It’s working, and it’s not hard, the thing that’s been pushing her helping her. Obi-Wan shepherds Luke out of their line of sight too, and they work like that until the soldiers finally leave. Leia keeps holding on until Obi-Wan drops down in front of her and says that they’re safe, hands warm on her shoulders. She slumps, the pushing thing fading back to the pulse it always is in her blood, and she’s dizzy. She can feel everyone too much, but she can pull away. Obi-Wan says she can, and he never lies to them.
They still have to leave.
“It’s very rare,” Obi-Wan explains to them – her, Mama, and Luke – in their little shuttle, the one they’ve lived in more than they live on planets. “Both of you have rare abilities, even though you’re equally as sensitive to the Force. We usually – they used to find Force-sensitive children because they had quicker reflexes, or made their dinner fly into a wall. Luke, the only other person I’ve met who could do what you do when you hunt was very special indeed. To have that level of control over your ability is so unheard of that we don’t actually have a name for it. And Leia, your gift is just as rare, though we do have a name for it. It’s called battle meditation.” He looks up at Mama, who’s radiating anger, anger that Leia can feel. “Padmé…”
“No.”
And Leia’s head hurts from the force of all that anger. Even Luke cringes. And Mama’s eyes go wide. Leia can’t see it, but she knows it happens. She’s pulled back, but she can’t pull out of this, the Force.
“What they do not only influences the world around them but is reciprocal.” Obi-Wan’s voice is gentle, like it always is, but it isn’t kind.
Luke frowns, and Leia jostles his arm with hers.
“We push, it pushes back,” she says, trying to find somewhere inside her that’s calm so she can help everyone else feel it. Mama turns away from the screen and stares at her. “Did it not work?” she asks.
Obi-Wan pats her on the knee. Luke shakes his head rapidly, hair flopping in his eyes.
“You just need some more practice meditating.” He pauses, and she follows his breathing. Everything gets a little better, a little softer, when she does that. “That’s all I’ll teach them, Padmé. Enough to control their powers. No more. I promise.”
Mama’s voice is shaking, when she says what she says next.
“Teach them the Gray code, too, the one that actually makes sense,” she says. “I sometimes wonder, if Ani had learned that – but it doesn’t matter now. No lightsabers. Not – not until they’re older.”
Leia doesn’t know who Ani was. She doesn’t ask.
They have lessons in the woods, in marketplaces, on the shuttle. Leia reads everything she can about war, and ethics, and strategy. She reads everything Obi-Wan can find, and what he can’t find she learns from Mom. She learns how to move things with the Force, but she isn’t as comfortable doing it as Luke is. She hones her reflexes, and then hones them again so that she doesn’t get them caught.
Luke learns how to fly. He learns how to be in two places at once – or what feels like two places at once, but is really two times at once, but time is a place. When he practices, Leia pulls away from their bond as quickly as she can, because she prefers having just a little precognition, not the whole world ten seconds in the future. They meditate, together and separately. Luke doesn’t want to do what Leia does, and Leia doesn’t want to do what Luke does.
It’s good, because she also reads stories, about how family can tear people apart. She’s glad that her family is as whole as it ever is.
They both learn how to use blasters from Mom. Leia’s is concealed under her breasts and layers of clothing. Luke’s is tucked under his shirt and robes.
Obi-Wan carries the two lightsabers.
They stay on one planet for three years, and Bail Organa is kind to them when he comes to visit, even though he’s there more for Mom than anything. Leia knows this, and beats Obi-Wan at chess while Luke tests his reflexes with a droid and a wooden version of his lightsaber.
She used to think that Obi-Wan was their father. They did that a lot, to hide, said they were a family of refugees, and five-year-olds aren’t all that smart. Leia’s fifteen now, and her last name, on this planet, is Larens, while Luke’s is Dale. He got a growthspurt, so they don’t say they’re twins. They don’t say that they’re related at all, but Leia looks more like Mom than Luke does, even though she doesn’t, not really. Luke has blue eyes, so they say he’s Obi-Wan’s son.
She must look like her father, she thinks, but doesn’t ask. They don’t talk about him much.
She beats Obi-Wan again, the day everything snaps into place.
“How are you so bad at this game?” she asks, smiling. “You know all about strategy.”
“Not as much as your mother. How many times have you won against her?” Obi-Wan asks, a glint in his eyes. Leia blushes, because it’s true that she’s only ever managed to get her mother into a stalemate, and even then only a few times. “Then again, I doubt anyone could beat your mother in strategy.”
Mom glances up from a holo she’s going over and smiles, then winks at Leia.
“Padmé, we need you, now more than ever before,” Bail says, voice carrying more than he thinks it does, and Mom closes her eyes. Leia doesn’t need the Force to know what she’s feeling.
“If he gets near the two of them he’ll know, Bail. You haven’t seen what happens when they’re together, when they fight together.”
Leia and Luke have experimented together, to see what it was like when Jedi went to war. Leia found the spaces in Luke’s mind where she’d always fit, unconscious before, and, thinking, the balance is what keeps me together, showed him gaps even he would have missed, how he could move even when he believed he couldn’t, and his strength had come back to her so that Obi-Wan had stumbled over nothing, thought Luke was feinting when he wasn’t, got tapped by Luke’s lightsaber twice and would have been dead if they hadn’t had them set to use less power for training purposes.
Luke thinks it first. They’ve lived a life of grim practicality, even if Luke still believes in heroes and happy endings. Luke thinks it first because he believes that if they can beat Darth Vader and the Empire, they can just go back to living their lives, but without the heaviness that’s always on them, now that they’ve grown up.
Leia thinks it second, because Leia knows where her skills are needed. She’s no Master, and there isn’t anyone alive to tell her how far her power will grow, but the Rebellion needs her if they want to win. What little they’ve been able to read about battle meditation says that it can literally turn the tide in a war. And Leia wants this war to be over so that Mom can finally be at peace.
But she also thinks it because Luke isn’t a master either. Pebbles are easy, and he can almost match Obi-Wan in a fight, who blames that on old age, but there are parts of the Force that he understands and she doesn’t, that living-somewhere-ahead-in-time, how he’ll laugh before a joke is finished, how he’s used it to help them land, to keep them from jostling in ways that could have killed them without his help. He needs to learn to control that, more than anything.
If Leia hadn’t learned how to block her emotions away (Obi-Wan’s first lesson), everyone in the city would have felt their broken hearts in that moment of agreement.
“Then we can’t stay together,” Leia says, matter-of-fact, holding onto the screaming rage that threatens to explode out of her skin. “I’ll go with Mom, and Luke will go with Obi-Wan. If they figure out I’m… what I am, I won’t know where he is, and the same goes for Luke. We already agreed.”
Luke nods, already going to pack his things.
Mom shakes her head, and Leia stands, takes her hands. She’s taller than Leia, and there are lines on her forehead and around her eyes, and she wears clothes that a servant wears, because that’s the game they’ve been playing for three years, that May and Lee Larens are palace servants.
Leia doesn’t use the Force.
“If they really need you, they need me too. And I know you have a plan. Let me help.”
Mom wraps her up in her arms, and Leia grips her just as fiercely. Luke joins them, crying, all of them are crying, and when they separate Mom goes over to Obi-Wan, whose hair is starting to have white at the edges.
“Take him to the one planet Darth Vader would never, ever allowed destroyed. You know which planet I mean?” Obi-Wan nods. “I remember there were a lot of big rocks there, in all the sand.” She smiles, but she’s still crying. Bail is sizing Leia up, and she glares at him.
He nods, something in his eyes, and his surety ripples through the Force.
Leia and Luke stare at each other, the day Luke has to leave. Everyone thinks they’ve said their goodbyes, but when you’ve nearly lived in someone’s mind for fifteen years it’s hard to actually say the words. Luke’s hair is, as always, threatening to fly away, like he generates his own wind. He flicks one of the braids that she has to wear now, which are more practical than tying her hair up, true, but still unfamiliar.
“You’d better be okay out there,” Leia says, voice stern. There’s a grin at the edges of Luke’s mouth, but it drops. He kisses her forehead, and his voice is in her head once again.
You’d better be okay too.
They won’t see each other for four years.
There are patterns that the universe will always follow. After a year of learning even more about politics and outstripping everyone in her classes, who have been trained for years in the things that Leia has lived , the Organa family declares that they have chosen an heir. Mom, in an encoded message that comes months after the declaration, tells Leia that it’s a family tradition, and that she should have seen some of the things she had to wear.
The duties of a princess are boring, and Leia really does want to do good, even if the Empire still reigns over them, so she out-maneuvers and outwits and out-charms all of her opponents to gain a place on the Senate. Everyone who thought that choosing a commoner as a royal heir was improper promptly shuts up, which Leia prefers. She loves them, all of them – I am the wielder of the flame, she thinks, and fire is dangerous, and they can’t hold it like she can.
She works for the Rebellion, mostly as a spy. Sometimes missions are more delicate, but she doesn’t fail. Not even when she’s captured by Darth Vader himself.
At least that’s what she thinks.
She wants to reach out through the void of space, warn them, let them escape like her message, sent to Obi-Wan and Luke, the only hope they have now. But her reach isn’t that far yet, and she hates, so deeply that she can understand why people want to hide in this forever: it saves her life, prevents her from striking out at everyone on the shuttlewhen she feels every soul on Alderaan die. Bail, she feels keenly only in his absence. He had been a friend, another perspective for her to poke at. And he’s gone.
And they lead her away, to a cell, and she finds that she can’t say a word, not even to Darth Vader, whose presence in the Force is nearly overwhelming. And he plays a guard dog for these people, when he could destroy all of them with rage – not with hate, hate is a cold thing whose only words to Leia are survive, so that she can avenge herself upon this monster who actually feels familiar.
Leia knows that this is the man Obi-Wan talked about, who lived in that space Luke inhabits, who saved his life.
She can’t, won’t make the logical steps that follow that, because it’s a reality too awful to comprehend.
So she sits down on the bed they’ve so graciously provided her, and she meditates. She sinks into the Force and doesn’t hide from Vader because he wouldn’t recognize her anyway, and she feels all the Stormtroopers on this shuttle, and she feels balance, the place between serenity and passion that is the Force, as she methodically interferes with their perception, hearing and sight.
She never takes control of them. Neither she nor Luke have the knack for that particular mind trick, though Luke could probably learn it if he really wanted to. Leia never takes over the will of anyone. All she does is pull, tug, push parts of them that they don’t even know exist, until they couldn’t hit her with a blaster if there were a whole troop of them in one of the corridors.
Patience, taught Obi-Wan, was the one thing she lacked. Well, now she has patience. She can feel Luke coming for her, Obi-Wan with him. She can wait, and decide if she hates her father after she asks Obi-Wan how he became Darth Vader in the first place.
Then – and then. Well, there aren’t words. Not when it’s his decision, not when he’s still present but almost unreachable, already becoming a part of the Force. He’s dead, but Luke isn’t, and Leia isn’t, and the idiot he brought along with him isn’t dead either, even though Leia almost wishes he were.
“You’ve been practicing,” Luke says, grinning across the hall from her. She has a plan, and it’s not a pretty plan, but it will get them to where they need to be.
One of the blasters implodes on itself, sending a Stormtrooper flying, and Leia grins back at him.
“So have you. So, we should definitely go now.”
“Go where, Princess?” Nerf-herder says, and Leia rolls her eyes.
“Men. Can’t even come up with a good escape plan.”
“Yours isn’t that great either,” Luke says, grim.
“At least it’s a plan,” she blasts back.
“Wow. I thought the kid was lying when he said his sister was the princess of Alderaan.”
They both glare at his (actually very pretty, now that Leia looks at it) face.
The rest of the story goes about the same.
Except when Luke learns that their own father killed Obi-Wan, destroyed Alderaan, nearly killed their mother and actually caused her to go into labor, and killed, still kills, Force-sensitive children, his hands and everything in the relatively private room Mom secured for their use start to shake.
Leia is very, very glad that she waited to yell at Mom until the Death Star was gone.
Mom explains, in starts and stops, what the Jedi used to be and why she never wanted them to be trained. She talks about a ten-year-old boy who missed his mother and was scolded for it by a supposed Master, how no one believed him when he dreamt of his mother’s suffering and death. She tells them about the village he destroyed because of it, and Leia and Luke have the same thought at the same time, I would do the same if someone did that to you, and when Mom chokes up talking about how Jedi weren’t supposed to feel, not anything, not if it could lead them to the Dark Side, Leia has to remind herself to breathe.
“Palpatine convinced Anakin that becoming a Sith would save my life. He dreamed about that, and he didn’t have any idea about your futures – they were two futures, of course, so that made sense afterward. He was terrified, and he became Darth Vader after – a lot of things, but I think Palpatine has the same gift you do, Leia, and he’s not respectful of free will. But Anakin chose to become a Sith, and it almost killed me. But when I saw your faces – I was ready to die. I wanted to die, after what he did to me – I kept going. Because I loved you too much to leave you alone in a world where your own father wanted you dead. I faked my death. I wanted Anakin to have died, so when Obi-Wan said that Darth Vader killed your father, I didn’t tell you the truth. I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want you to think that your abilities were evil, or that you were. But that doesn’t justify keeping it from you for so long.”
Luke’s eyes are red, and Leia’s probably are too. But after this comes resolve – not hate, Leia decides, because hate is a poison and she can’t afford to let her own mind be poisoned, not now. Darth Vader and the Emperor have to die. Not because of the balance in the Force, but because they are murderers who are too powerful to be imprisoned.
“What was his name, before?” Luke asks.
“Skywalker. I loved that name.” Their mother smiles, a softness in her that people rarely see.
Luke nods.
“I’m Luke Skywalker, then. I won’t change my name anymore. And I want him to know who I am. That can be… arranged? Somehow?”
Leia nods, because it can, but she doesn’t offer to change her name. It’s the one she’s worn for the longest amount of time, and she owes so much to the people who gave it to her. But their mother’s name is listed, in their records, as Padmé Amidala-Skywalker.
And it hurts, because any connection she could have had with her father vanished with her planet. Her name never changes, and it seems that Han is the only person on their base that understands why, even though he’s still awful, still an ass.
She wishes that something of Obi-Wan had been passed on, and when Luke tells her how he’d actually been going by Ben, laughing so he won’t cry, Leia thinks that that’s a good name. It’s something she could tell her child about, when she has a child, how her real father wasn’t a Sith Lord but a good man who couldn’t play chess for the life of him and made lightsaber noises when they practiced with sticks instead of the real things.
Han, when the time comes that they have to decide, agrees, and she feels his memory of an old man who saved his life, really, and gave him something more to look forward to than death that always hunted him.
And for a while, Leia actually believes in happy endings.