Chapter Text
“You may fire when ready.” Tarkin’s words moved around Leia’s head, not quite piercing her consciousness but settling in a fog around her and clouding her thoughts.
Time slowed down as Leia watched the terrible green laser bolt hit Alderaan. Her home. The explosion set fire to her veins and to the space around them. She could hear them screaming on the planet below and she screamed with them. Something so primal and guttural that Tarkin took a step back.
She felt the death of millions in her heart as solidly as she felt the floor beneath her hands as she collapsed to the ground. She felt her mother and father burn and she burned with them—the fire furious in her veins—Vader took a step back, a realization dawning on him because that fire burned in him too.
Tarkin was talking. She couldn’t hear him but the sound of his voice settled the fire. Cooled it and hardened but it still broiled beneath the surface.
His words finally got through to her, the sound coming from far away despite him being so close to her. “—back to her cell.” He had turned away from her, admiring his carnage. The guards by the door moved to pull her up and the fire ignited again. She would not go with them. She held out her hands and they flew backwards into the wall.
Tarkin turned, a smirk disappearing from his face “Vader what—“ was all he said because she imagined him choking on his words and then he was. The fire burned in her so furious and so bright now that her eyes were the color of the sun.
Tarkin’s body hit the floor with a loud thud as she stood, the fire still raging. Vader had stood perfectly still throughout the event, only his breathing had quickened. He ignited his lightsaber and she faced him with no fear and no weapon except her rage.
She imagined the lightsaber in her hand and then it was. She could feel the death of hundreds through his lightsaber, all those he had killed screamed at her demanding vengeance. Some of the voices she knew.
Then she looked at him again and he stood staring at her. And she saw him. Not the mechanical monster, but the reckless hero, the compassionate Jedi, the loving husband, the fearful child, the angry teenager, the burning man. She saw him, all of him—felt his pains and angers, sorrows and fears—she was him and he was her.
Vader collapsed to the ground, memories long buried now overwhelming him. Not believing what his photoreceptors were telling him, he removed the top dome of his helmet and threw it to the side. Still able to breathe and he could finally see, with his own eyes, the woman before him.
A spitting image of the wife he left behind with a fire that burned in her the same way it burned in him.
She held the lightsaber pointed at him as he sat up to kneel in front of her. His head bowed and his breathing still rasping but his voice no longer mechanical.
“Daughter.” He spoke the word aloud confirming what they both knew to be true.
“Father.” She replied with hatred in her voice. The red lightsaber burning only inches from his scarred and pale head. He looked up at her then and the fire still burned in her yellow eyes.